Bright Ideas...

    Grandmas love the world cup. What can I say?
     http://johnnygrundle.blogspot.com/

12:20 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Hump Me. No, really.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Sodom. The third annual Hump! amateur porn festival took place on Friday and Saturday, sponsored by the Stranger, and made possible by all the sick fucks out there who sent in videos of robot erotica.
In all seriousness, though, I expected much more hardcore. Wasn't this marketed as a "porn festival"? Sure, there was the 8-minute camera shot of the guy and girl getting it on while listening to the John in the Morning show on KEXP. That was pretty standard fucking. Also, we had some cookie-cutter foot fetish and BDSM porn, as well as the odd vampire stripper sucking a guy off.
But the majority, the vast majority of the festival was humor. From the couches humping in the living room after the humans leave, to an animated "Alien Fucks Predator" scene, to all the videos involving robot-on-girl sex, this was first and foremost a venue for filmmakers to come out and push the limits of their creativity while not having to pander to a "Rated R"-limiting target audience.
And I have to say - THANK GOD!
Has anyone noticed how boring porn is, always? Things that make me want to retch, in no particular order:
a) tight shots of cock in pussy, cock in ass, for minutes on end (cock in mouth is still OK)
b) cumshots, or more to the point, the predictability of always having a set routine for your actors, i.e., always finishing with the "grand finale" all over the place
c) absence of any plot, dialogue, or character.

This was so apparent at Hump. The audience, including myself was laughing, clapping, totally enjoying such films as "Sex on Rollerskates" and "Zombie Tapioca Fuckfest 4000". Then the film would change (to use an aforementioned example) to your standard vampire-stripper eating out another chick, and you could hear a pin drop. Sure, everyone's eyes were glued to the screen - but thats only because the vampire (or vampiress...anyway) was totally hot. You could sense the disappointment in the room as the humor faded and we all went back to where the "rules" still apply: tight pussy shot. POV dick-suck. Cumshot all over her tits. Jesus, if making porn were this simple you'd think every Tom, Dick and Harry would be doing it by now. Oh wait. Never mind.
It takes skills to win over an educated hipster crowd, and even though I (personally) don't prefer to see asses being fucked or dicks being sucked by men with beards, I gave credit to a talented, creative director when it came due. Fat 19 year old chick gang bang with 3 overweight 60 year olds? Sounds terrible, right? But I laughed, clapped, and cried a little, just like everyone else in there, because it was unexpected, funny, and just a little bit poignant (just kidding, its not poignant at all). I'll back a gambler any day of the week over Joe Bore-mo doing the same old shit that half the world has already done.
On a related note, my "critics pick" for the fest wasn't even porn at all. It was a static shot of two of those animatronic dogs that they sell at Wal-Mart. You know the ones I mean - about the same size and look of a Lhasa Apsa, with a bright red tongue, they sometimes walk and bark and do all sorts of robot dog shit to amuse kids and sometimes other pets.
But the filmmaker had found two of these robot dogs whose "function" was to continually stick out their bright red tongues and lick. That was all they did, was lick. White fur and a bright red tongue. And they positioned two of them facing one another, so that for a good 2 minutes, all you had were two dogs licking one another to the sound of the whirring mechanics going on inside their plastic bodies. Strange, yes. Erotic? Not at first. But something strange happened the more you watched - and credit the director for not moving the camera for the entire scene. Because the more they licked, the more you began to focus on the act of licking, their tongues, and the soft white fur, rather than the fact that they were, in fact, robot dogs. Something inside me, and I think inside of everyone, started to become aroused simply by the idea of two tongues touching one another, over and over, rhythmically. The color red - and the repetitive movements and sound - you dont have to be a Freud to interpret what's going on up there (or down there, if we're talking about our physical reaction). It's interesting to have your body react as a litmus test to theories you dismiss as ridiculous in psych 101.
But if it were just two dogs licking, I wouldnt have given it the "critics pick" award. There was a twist at the end. Just as the crowd is leaning forward in their seats, beginning to sweat and entertain naughty thoughts with these Chinese children's toys, the camera cuts and we see the two "dogs" again, this time, in the same position, licking one another, but with most of their white fur removed. All that remains is long white furry eyebrows. Their eyeballs look massive without any surrounding fur and their nude plastic bodies are compartively puny to their huge heads. Its disorienting, and repulsive. All of a sudden, you're watching great-grandpa Mel lick his reflection in the mirror. I loved it. Way to fuck with the audience. I doff my cap to you, sir.

I end with a simple plug for a small Seattle band named "I Love Jen!" (who the fuck is Jen?). These guys made the soundtrack to the Robot-porn entry at Hump and while the video was only so-so, it would have been nothing without this dope, dope robot song to go along with it.
The best part about it is that I searched "Robot Sex" on Itunes and it was the 2nd entry that came up. Check it out. Its on my myspace and there's a link to them here: http://www.myspace.com/raymondlovesjen
Their song is called Robot; Sexy.

Sorry I cant put any actual photos up on here, but that was kind of a big deal at the fest. Dan Savage actually threatened to "make us eat his Santorum" if we took any footage of the videos. So you'll have to make due with the title screen of Hump, my own version of the robot porn video, and stock footage of one of my favorite porns of all time.

So who wants to play?

11:46 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Officially, Seattle

    After months of suburbia, I'm here. It's glorious.

Pictures up at http://johnnygrundle.blogspot.com/.

10:46 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The Red Bull Seattle Soapbox Races

The Red Bull Soap Box races kicked off today with a caffeinated rush to an already coffee-drenched city. Hay bales covered the sides of a track that stretched down Fremont Ave for blocks. Huge jumbo-screen TVs and pop music screamed from all directions. People danced, climbed streetlights, and performed while thousands more cheered on the odd, multi-colored, multi-shaped vehicles barreling down the 500m course. There were slaloms to maneuver. There were nurses in mini-skirts. And yes, there was even Sir Mix-a-lot....

Check out the full blogrundle at: http://johnnygrundle.blogspot.com/

With pictures!

1:06 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

My 100% Perfect Girl

So I'm walking along 45^th St and I turn right onto University Way. This is a Way that I should know much better than I do, seeing as how I tell people that I "live in Seattle". It's about as accurate as describing myself as a "Political Scientist", even though that's what I'm officially baccalaureated as (and, to be fair, I have titled myself as such, but only when talking to girls who speak poor English, abroad…and to my surprise, it works!). Yes, Seattle, that great grey and green glass monolith to the south. Hi there, lamp post, whatcha knowin? Glad to see your…power flowin! Yes, that's a strange land down there, a Fairfax-to-DC drive, although without any psychological water barriers to maneuver across…unless you happen to live on the east side, of course…but I digress…

On University Way there's this small store that sells Tibetan products, mostly crap, in my opinion, cast bronze bells, tie dye shirts, "prayer flag" packages, etc. There's incense burning constantly. But I like this store. They give you free tea. Plus they have lots of lovely sweaters made from yak hair and interesting photos on the wall. I stop there sometimes.

Today I opened the door and walked in. There she was, perusing the Buddhist chant CDs. My 100% perfect girl.

Why was she my 100% perfect girl. I don't know, it's hard to break down into justifications, I just know that she was. In fact, nothing about her particularly stood out as noteworthy, by itself. You know, her nose, I mean, as much as I love noses…hers was relatively similar to most other noses that exist. Smallish-largish, with two holes in the bottom. Her eyes were clear, blue…OK, that's nice…but sitting in a heap amongst her nose and pretty red lips I couldn't but root to my spot, bewildered by the sense that it finally happened. I finally met her. Her breasts, hair, I don't even remember. It was a heady mix of everything working together…perfectly…that let me know. The way she moved, mixing up her eyebrows as she read the back of the CD case. The way she cocked her hips to one side while standing, but not in a pretentious model way, and definitely not flat footed and frumpy in a typical Seattle hipster way. I hate the hipsters.

But she was fresh. I could see her smiling on a beach; those pale cheeks of hers burned and freckled in the summer sun. The loose sun dress fitting in casual perfection. Her thighs, slightly muscled. I could see her racing her Airedale terrier to the door of her beach house, laughing as she mashed avocadoes in a bowl and poured a glass of wine for herself. She would smell good. Her tongue wouldn't taste like cigarettes. She would be perfect. She would be my 100% perfect girl. 

She put down the CD she was looking at and exited the store. As she brushed by me I smelled her hair.

It's embarrassing to think that I let her walk right out. But I didn't know what to say. I still don't know what I should've said. "Umm, excuse me, did you find what you were looking for? Can I help you find what you're looking for? You're exactly what I'm fucking looking for?" Nothing could come close to the gravity I needed to convey to her…Hey, you're my 100% perfect, here, stop for a moment and let's talk. Nothing, that is, that could happen within the necessarily brief time I'd have before she walked out the store. And let's be honest, here, I'd fuck it up and scare her off long before she even asked my first name. Predictable response: "I'm your 100% perfect girl? What the fuck does that even mean? Are you trying to sound Japanese?"

But we totally could've gotten hot wings and laughed over the fact that she makes soap in her apartment. We could've taken a ride in my father's 2001 Honda CRV and opened the windows slyly, not to let the other feel uncomfortable with the odor of dog smell, as we rode towards Gasworks Park. She might've taken me into the unused machinery, got me up on one of the pipelines, and demonstrated her parkour skills…and challenged me to follow her, in a total non-pressure perfect tone of voice, that let me know that she's my equal and yet compassionate and not competitive.

We might've spent the entire rest of the afternoon together, until it got dark, about 7 or so, and we'd be standing at that little park right next to Pike Place Market, watching the cars underneath zip by on the viaduct. And she'd turn to me and say (and I'd totally agree), "look, we can't blow everything on how we feel right now…this is crazy anyway, we need some time to sort through our feelings for one another, because…and this sounds crazy…from the first moment I saw you, when you came through that swinging door into the Tibetan shop, I knew that you…were my 100% perfect guy. And I've had about the most amazing afternoon I've ever had with you, and…I don't know that it's love, that we're not crazy, and its not the hot wings, or the incense, or the perfect sunny Seattle weather, but I'm all in a swoon."

And we'd kiss under the skyscrapers, lit from underneath like a film noir. 

This is going on as the shopkeeper asks me, for the third time, if I want some tea. I say no, and turn to walk out the door. My heart's even beating fast, like I've got a shot of adrenaline going through my body or something (I fucking love that feeling). I don't know what I'm going to do, just that I'm totally impotent and full of conflicting emotions. I exit the shop and see her. She's already about a half a block away, running to catch a bus. The bus waits for her. God, she evens run perfectly. There she goes. My 100% perfect girl.

Spirits fall.

But not too much. There's always….

My 98% perfect girl.

(thanks to sara and her murakami)

11:54 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Lyrics Supreme

            A wise man once told me, "Johnny…there are lyrics guys, and there are melody guys." I'm fairly certain (though very far from being any sort of a music critic and able to accurately define the two) that I'm a textbook melody guy. I love the bump and funk of west coast rap; I'm only into emo for the girls; and I absolutely can't stand Bob Dylan. But occasionally, occasionally, a band will come along that will have both, and I'll stop and pay attention to the lyrics (it helps if the band has a wicked bassist). The lyrics below are from one of those bands…and they're some of my favorite. 

            If time is my vessel/

            Then learning to love/

            Might be my way back to sea

Now let those words sink into your brain for a moment – Love, sea, vessel - They look easily understandable, even trite. But let your brain play with the words for a moment, try to envision the poetic reality of what's being said, and I go glass-eyed with a curled smile on my lips every time.

            What about asking ourselves what is in the sea in the first place? Or, conversely, what's in the harbor? Is it a barren, loveless, rocky inlet that's separated from the ocean by miles of turbulent water? If so, what would the passage into harbor have been like? Since he obviously has been to the sea before, and needs to find a way back to it – He must have arrived, possibly riding a disillusioned tide, all the way past the brackish waters of the Bay of Break-up. Hopefully, he's simply lost his way, or been led there by another captain. Maybe he woke up one morning, and the boat was sailing past Bermuda, and he thought, oh, we're in a relatively open part of the ocean, so I wont even worry about reading the charts anymore, I'll just concentrate on whipping up the best damn stir-fry I can, and then maybe taking in a Steve Martin movie, having a glass of wine, and passing out below decks. And then when he wakes up…bam. The boat has mysteriously taken a course past thousands of miles of sea and into the St. Lawrence waterway, up all the way into the Great Lakes, and he has no fucking clue how to get back down it, because he's not in one of those eastern lakes, he's way the fuck over near Minnesota.

            Maybe the whole point is that, since time is his vessel, he has the ability to move, and discover things about life, or the coastline, as it were. He can take this vessel and move in any direction, seeking new ports, exploring coves and whirpools and sea monsters…Yet his experiences will necessarily have to be finite – time will eventually run out. And if he wants to find a way back out to sea before it all ends, back out to the calming, possibly uncharted but definitely romantic notion of the sea, he better learn to love. And much like an experienced pilot will lead the captain of a boat into an out of harbor, so he sings, later in the song,

            But the stars we will navigate/

            Through the holes in your eyes

            Now we have the other factor in the equation, and the question, can he give up control of his boat? But he wants to; he clearly wants to…it's a desperate kind of want, almost a need, for someone else to come along and show him the way out – a needy man, a helpless man. Of course he has the diesel fuel. Yes, he also has a three-week supply of dry biscuits and peanut butter. The bilge pumps are functioning as they're supposed to. But he needs someone to take the wheel. He's crying out, take me, steer me, help this pathetic wayward soul cross the latitudes with a kindred soul, let it be not through pity but through true love, and we'll wait until our vessel begins to sink underneath us before we even cast a glance up at the setting sun over miles of endless, glassy ocean.

            Anyway, that's how I see it. Fucking brilliant.

            On a related note, I'm wondering if people can read a blog and consider themselves just "whelmed". That's really what I'm shooting for, just meeting your expectations, and no more. Just a nice, easy whelm. 

             (If I do happen to underwhelm you, please lower your expectations accordingly.)

11:12 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

My death dream

I was being chased. 

I turned around, knowing that he was about to overtake me. I don't know what it was, a reflex, something not conscious, a "turn and fight" mechanism. And so I turned, and he was almost on top of me. I had barely enough time to swing out my arm and throw the ice cubes in my plastic cup at his face. I know, I know, "a cup of ice"? But it was all I had! It was a reaction, an unconscious, animal reaction. I think that maybe somewhere back in time, in the deep past, I would have had the instinct to know how to fight back, to gouge his eyes or pound his face or something. But here I was, a product of the modern age, a pacifist, a student. My primal survival instincts had been lost in translation somewhere. And I threw a cup of ice at him.  

I looked at his face as I threw the ice cubes. There was an aspect of determination in his expression. This was not random, this was not bloodlust. This was calculated.

He lunged at me. Not a jump, but a lunge, horizontally, towards my body. I braced for the impact, a reflex, my muscles contracting in expectation of the hit. He impacted me first with his left shoulder, and then quickly thrust a blade deep into my stomach. My mouth opened into an "O" and I felt shock, and an overwhelming concept of absurdity. There was no pain. When the blade slipped inside of me (and it was a slip…no cutting or tearing) it was a sensation that I had never felt before…quite uncomfortable and heavy. A feeling similar to breaking my first bone as a child, a feeling that something deep inside me was wrong, broken, twisted. A full feeling in my stomach – the kind of sensation you get after a holiday meal. All my senses, all my feelings became very clear to me at that time...I suppose it was a dying man's moment of clarity. I felt the skin on my stomach begin to get very warm, tingly even. My eyes, wide open and fully dilated, looked into the face of the man who had just stabbed me. He raised his eyes, from my stomach to my face, and met my stare. His face was tanned, scarred around the corners of both eyes. Everything seemed to be running slowly, deliberately, in my mind. His head was smallish, smaller than mine, certainly, and it looked as if he had black hair, but it was covered under a type of cap with no brim. I didn't know if it was an Islamic cap, or not. I know that it was black, flat on the top, and decorated with gold and green braids. The man's eyes showed no betrayal of sympathy, considering the situation he had put me in. They shown pale blue, and the pupils were very small in the sunlight. The edges of his mouth curled up only slightly, just enough to let me know that this was considered a success to him, or possibly he was smiling because he hated me, and he was happy to see me begin to die. I don't know, I don't know why he was smiling. I knew that it was the scariest thing that I had ever seen. I realized, right then, that I was utterly powerless, I was gone, I was going to see what there was after this life. There were no flashbacks, no merry journey back through my past to relive my best moments. It was only in these last moments, after my mind had already succumbed to the notion of death, that I realized my perceptions of how it would all end was a Hollywood fantasy. All I could do in those last moments was stare, stare into this man's face, with what must have been an expression of pure surprise on my face, eyebrows arched as high as they would reach, eyeballs fully opened, mouth stretched into an elongated "o".

I exhaled, the first time that I had done so since the knife had gone into me, and my breath was unnaturally hot. It was a humid, sticky hot, like breathing in a sauna. I slowly turned my head downwards, down towards my belly, and there it was, yes, a huge blade, much bigger than I had expected, poking right out where my belly button should have been. The size of it ruffled my shirt a bit, but otherwise it looked kind of natural – like a metal handle jutting out from my body, that this crazy man just happened to be holding onto. It was a very wide blade, and it angled outwards so that it must have been even wider inside of me. It was shiny, a beautiful knife, really, brightly polished sliver, with gold calligraphy etched on to it. It seems unbelievable, but in the midst of all this I focused on this writing, for some reason, since it was so beautiful. Is this Persian, I thought? Is this man who is stabbing me Persian? The hand gripping the knife was rough, tanned, scarred on the thumb. The knuckles were white, and I realized he must have been gripping the knife with all his strength. I turned my gaze back up to the man's face, however this time the trip seemed to take much longer. My head was beginning to feel quite heavy. My eyelids had closed a tiny bit, and they must have been tearing up, because everything seemed to be a little misty. I think it must have been an involuntary tearing, because I was still much too bewildered to be sad. My full stomach seemed to be getting fuller, I was getting very warm, and the idea to undo my shirt and cool off came over me. My eyes, fixed on his face, never moved, but my arms began to swing towards the buttons on my shirt, clumsily. With this, the man shoved the knife in even more, with one hard push, all the way in to the hilt. I heard a faint pop, or maybe it was a crack, I remember that, a faraway sound in my body like a rubber band snapping. My vision all of a sudden became very dark, and my legs no longer could support my own weight. I slumped, kept upright by the metal support in my stomach, which the man soon removed in a tug that I hardly felt. I collapsed on to the sidewalk, on my side. My body, which had been so warm just a moment before, began to rapidly feel colder and colder. I couldn't move anything, my neck, my legs, my arms. My blurry vision, which was rapidly fading, was concentrated on the cement in front of me. I thought of nothing, no profound thoughts. This wasn't a dignified or a graceful end. This was me, thick in a heap, with the sounds and smells and the sight of the world quickly leaving me. I didn't feel scared, I didn't feel excited, I didn't feel sad. It was a whimper, and not a bang, and I wouldn't have known how else to do it.

            It came quickly, death. It came about the same time that my vision completely went dark. I let out a little breath, and never drew one back in. I had been killed. I was dead.

10:21 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Great moments in Russian literature

"So, what will happen to your consciousness? Your consciousness, yours, not anyone else's. Well, what are you? There's the point. Let's try to find out. What is it about you that you have always known as yourself? What are you conscious of in yourself? Your kidneys; your liver? Your blood vessels? No. However far back you go in your memory, it is always in some external, active manifestation of yourself that you come across your identity – in the work of your hands, in your family, in other people. And now listen carefully. You in others – this is your soul. This is what you are. This is what your consciousness has breathed and lived on and enjoyed throughout your life – your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what now? You have always been in others and you will remain in others. And what does it matter to you if later that is called your memory? This will be you – the you that enters the future and becomes a part of it."

6:47 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

What is the deal with these anti-smoking ads?

          Today is the last straw. I'm serious, the last one. It's the last time I'm going to subject myself to watching these "Truth Council" anti-tobacco ads. You know the ones I'm talking about – the slickly produced "anti-ad", the ones that are directed and acted as in the "indie-documentary" style that producers think is so hip nowadays (and, to be fair, it is hip nowadays).

            Seriously. The next time I see one, I'm switching the channel. I'm going to get up from my seat, walk over to the remote control (which is sitting on the chair across the room), and change the channel to CNBC, QVC, TNN – any channel whose demographic the anti-smoking lobby is giving up on, that's what I'll turn to.

            So what set me off, you might ask? What was the deathly blow? Well, I was sitting in my mom's living room, watching television today, when one of these ads came on the TV. You can always tell something "different" is going on in these commercials, even if you can't guess that it is sponsored by the anti-tobacco lobby (this is evident, like I said, from the confrontational, faux-documentary style). In this particular commercial, a "hip" young black man is shown walking into various gun shops. He has a retro-looking army jacket on, and a fashionable mini-afro. He sports glasses with thick black rims, because for today's youth, thick rims signifies "hipster", and nothing is cooler than a "hipster". This sense of "cool" is extremely important in these anti-smoking ads; this cannot be emphasized enough. For the message to work, American kids must consider the protagonist of the commercial, the documenter, if you will, to be "cool". Ironically, this is an advertising strategy that tobacco companies have been exploiting for years. (On a related note, this may be why American teenagers continue to shoot each other in classrooms, be apathetic voters, and not give a shit about the state of the health care industry – because Michael Moore is definitely "not cool".)

            This "cool" black documenter is all the cooler for being confrontational. In every gun store that he walks into, he asks the person at the register – "Do you have any 'light' bullets?" Of course, the people at the counter, instead of asking why the fuck a camera is being shoved in their face and their being asked rhetorical questions, simply look bewildered and answer, of course, in the negative.

            "You don't have any 'light' bullets?" he continues, "Or maybe some 'ultra-light' bullets? No bullets that you would consider 'less deadly'?" Ahh, now the average viewer begins to realize which lobby has sponsored this ad. "Well let me ask you", the documenter continues in a 'follow-me-to-the-payoff' leading voice, "have you ever heard of tobacco companies marketing some of their cigarettes as 'light' and 'ultralight'? Isn't it terrible to mislead their consumers by labeling cigarettes 'light' and yet they still will eventually kill the consumer? Isn't this just terrible? Aren't you just fucking outraged?"

            The answer for me is, fuck no I'm not outraged. The outrageous aspect of this entire commercial is that this lobby spent time and money to hire an actor and a film crew to pussy-foot around a non-issue! Tobacco = unhealthy? Even deadly? It's ingrained in the American conscious by now, don't you understand? No one in America is unaware of the fact that tobacco is deadly. Cigarettes will kill you – we know! We hear you loud and clear! And people still waste money trying to harass the remaining smokers into quitting. What other legal industry do we see attacked with this sort of relentless tenacity, year after year, long after the fait accompli of saturated awareness has taken place?

            I've written and re-written this next part of the blog several times now, all trying to keep the same voice as the first half. I want to continue my rant on the anti-smoking lobby, and I especially wanted to add something on how it was pathetic that this particular commercial used gun stores as a prop, not as an issue to be discussed in and of itself (I think that Americans could use a few anti-gun advertisements on prime-time).

            But…I can't. In fact, once it's out on the screen, the more I think about my own feelings towards the subject and the more I think…hmm, its kind of cool that the media has actually reversed a phenomenon, and changed the way Americans think of smoking. Smokers used to be the bees knees – now they're outcasts, shoved onto the sidewalk. It gives me hope to think that not everything that the media promotes will continue to stay the way it is…

            For example, the culture of fear that the media promotes (disclaimer: these ideas are not my own, see "Bowling for Columbine" for originals). I'm optimistic that this paradigm for how we produce our news will eventually change. Granted,

a)      Bad news is, and has always been, more interesting and compelling than "good" news,

b)      We have no state news service in this country, which would presumably be immune to the pressures of advertisers. Since bad news = compelling television, private news organizations fill their shows with fear, woe and the ever-present expectation of "breaking news" to sell advertising,

c)      Housewives will always worry about the level of radon in their basements, no matter what the nightly news says.

But this can all change! It can change, and we can live in a world where Wolf Blitzer is forced to become a night manager at Arby's because no one will watch his shitty show anymore.

      I think maybe it's also possible that we can change our relentless attitude of consumption in this country. I used to think that this is impossible (and in reality I still do think its impossible) but now that the anti-tobacco lobby is succeeding, my hope is renewed. Because I get sick of constantly hearing that our economy is struggling, we're not "purchasing enough commodities" and that "retail sales are sluggish", and "the home market is crumbling". Can't we all just be happy with what we have? Do we really need to buy new clothes every season, a new car and computer every couple years, and have the latest gadget whenever Apple unveils it? Oh, wait…hold on, I can't type now…I'm getting a text message on my new iPhone.

      Wait, now what was I saying again?

      I'll wrap this up because I'm about to lose my enthusiasm once again – I'm imagining the curtain behind which all media is produced, and I just can't believe that any sort of positive social influences are at work behind it...It's probably just a pleasant coincidence, with the anti-smoking and all.

Anyway, it's much easier to void your mind of any hope that you can make a difference, and let other people do all the heavy emotional lifting. A message to whomever is pulling the levers of our media: Make me feel scared, happy, hungry – whatever you feel is appropriate, because in reality, I'm an individual in a country of over 300 million people anyway, and the illusion of self-determination, individuality, and democracy keeps me content in my bed at night. Whether it be Rupert Murdoch, Oprah, or Karl Rove – Persuade me that my country is great! Because for all the problems and fear in the world today, at least we don't have to worry about getting bombed.

      Well, unless you're fighting overseas. Or are a US diplomat in a "hot zone". Or are a US tourist in all of the developing world. Or are a….

(transmission discontinued)

12:52 AM - 2 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

This is Albania

I knew there was a problem the moment I arrived in Podgorica. The bus station, usually the main artery for the life blood of transportation in the Balkans, did not list anywhere in Albania on its departure board. This was strange, I reckoned, considering the border was no more than a half an hour's drive to the south.

            "Excuse me," I asked, in my slowest English, "can you tell me when the bus leaves for Albania?"

            "There are no buses to Albania." A-ha.

"Ah, so can you tell me when the train leaves to Albania?"

"There hasn't been train service to Albania since 1999." A-ha. Legacies of the Kosovo conflict, and I was seeing them up-close and personal! This was so exciting. But I had to double check for myself. Sometimes in these countries taxi drivers are in cahoots with the ticket sellers; you just never know.

But after a short walk down to the train station, it was true: no trains to Albania. Let me repeat, this country was no more than 30km away, and there was absolutely no public transportation to the border, let alone through the border. These people must really dislike one another (this was confirmed on many occasions in Serbia and Montenegro, to be fair).

So what was I to do? I had left Kotor, on the Montenegrin Riviera, in a bit of a huff, after the crazy lady I stayed with tried to rip me off for 10 euro and threatened to call the police on me. I had nowhere to stay in Albania, I didn't even know what town I was going to end up in for the night. I was just trying to go as far as I could with the pack on my back, and hope that people were friendly. So I flagged down a taxi in front of the train station and negotiated for 10 euro to the border.

The road between Podgorica and the border runs through a dusty farming plain for several kilometers, before it reaches the edge of a great lake. All around the lake are tall mountain peaks, burnt and rocky in the relentless summer sun. The temperature at the train station read 43 degrees, and it must have been hotter as we moved further south. Through twisty roads and dangerous mountain switchbacks we progressed, the taxi driver smoking Bond cigarette after cigarette, a cheap Serbian variety, with the windows rolled up. Halfway through the ride he looked over at my tattoos, and asked, "Ukraine? Byelorus?"

"No", I answered, "Amerikanets." He raised his eyebrows in surprise, took a drag of his cigarette, and never said another word.

We finally arrived at the border crossing, a lonely affair, with the lake on one side, and a steep mountain cliff on the other. It actually didn't look as ramshackle as I thought it would look. Certainly better than some of the Central American border crossings. I cleared my way through the Serbian control and made my way over to the Albanian side. Immediately I was asked if I needed a taxi. "Only 50 euros to Tirana! Lowest price!" Shit, I thought. Looking over at the Albanian side of the border, there was only a few cargo trucks and some chickens running toward the lake. No buses, no transportation except this guy. And he was asking the equivalent of 4 nights' accommodation just to ride in his car for a couple hours.

"Ehh, I'll think about it." I told him, and right about when I reached the Albanian control, I noticed a car with German license plates. The driver, an older man, was arguing with the border guard over some discrepancy in his passport. "Excuse me", I asked, trying to sound as polite as I could, hide my tattoos, and cover my traveler's scent, "Do you think I could get a ride where you're going?" The guy looked at me for several seconds, as if I'd appeared out of the hazy mist surrounding the lake. I could see his mind switch gears from Albanian into English, as if waking from a dream. But before he could even answer, his son, a broad-shouldered guy about my own age, walked up behind him and asked me where I was going. "I don't know…Tirana? Durres?"

"We're going to Durres, but through Tirana…let me ask my dad if it's OK." They then conversed for a few moments, with the son nodding occasionally at my pathetic state. The taxi driver hovered in the background, with a feigned look of carelessness that belied his pacing back and forth. "OK" said the father hesitantly, in good English but with a thick accent, "But we only take you to Shkodra!" This was good enough, as Shkodra was the first major town in northern Albania. I gave the taxi driver a victorious wink and climbed into the air-conditioned Opel with my new friends. Soon, after paying the "entrance tax" to the country, we sped off into the wild fields of Albania.

This family (there was a daughter in the car as well), it turned out, were Kosovar refugees, living in Germany. The father, who could speak English well, as long as he had enough time to think of the words, owned an Italian restaurant, and had also worked in Dallas. This was the first of many occasions, which I had read about, where Albanians professed their admiration of America. "My greatest dream is to live in America", the son told to me as we waited for a herd of goats to cross the road. "My father told me that Americans are very open people, easy to talk about any subject with. The Germans are very closed. Like ice." I had to agree with him on this. He pointed to a large billboard hanging from the side of a building. "You see this advertisement? You see the size of it?" I agreed that it was very large. "In Prishtina we have this size poster of Bill Clinton, right downtown. And our main street is called "Bill Clinton Street". This was leading me to some understanding of the fondness shown to so many Americans. Unsurprisingly, it was directly the opposite sentiment I had heard from most Serbs.

We went on discussing America and Albania with the all the excitement that this rare cultural meeting afforded. "What kind of music do you like?" He continued without waiting for an answer, "I like hip-hop and rap. And also Michael Jackson."  He then leaned to the front seat and spoke rapid Albanian to his sister. Sure enough, within a few seconds she had found the "Dangerous" album on the mp3 cd that we were listening to.

"Wow," I exclaimed, and was about to say "I haven't heard this in a really, really long time!" but I managed to shut myself up, not wanting to sound elitist. And in fact, it is a pretty damn good album, especially hearing "Heal the World" while watching the sun set over Albanian farmers pitching hay onto ox carts. This could have been a Live Aid montage, I guessed, while subconsciously checking myself to not "think elite", either. Albanians, and Kosovars, especially, are extremely proud people.

We made it to Shkodra and I had successfully ingratiated myself to the family. "Would you like to ride with us to Tirana?" The father asked. Looking at the tangle of streets, litter, people, and ill-constructed buildings, Shkodra seemed like the last place I wanted to just hop out and try to find a hotel in. I nodded back to him, and he seemed contented. We really were having a good time, and having a laugh at the chaos all around us. In Albania, I came to find out, there are almost no functioning streetlights. Everything except the main intersections are free-for-alls, and even those only have one traffic cop directing the flow with a small red baton. Horse-drawn carts and stray dogs run everywhere, as do humans. Dirt and dust rise from the badly cracked streets, creating a haze that the failing sunlight made doubly dangerous. To top it off, Albanians have absolutely no fear of anything on the roads, mainly because they are all driving Mercedes Benz (good for the driver, woe to the pedestrians).

I asked the son about this fact, and all the family seemed to take notice of it for the very first time. It was true, they replied, surprised. Almost every other car on the road is a fairly new Mercedes. "This is like Prishtina", the son told me, "Where you can see the latest and most powerful Porsche, Mercedes, BMW on the road…and I always ask myself, where do they get the money for these cars?"

"It's probably best not to ask", I replied, remembering things that I had read about Albania, about how if a car is stolen in Europe, it will probably be found here. In fact, I noticed that a good proportion of cars on the road had European license plates, mostly Italian, but were driven by Albanians. This struck me as strange, and still does, to see in Tirana the exact same thing, even with "for sale" signs attached to them, as if it were all commonplace and legal. But I didn't bring this up, for fear of insulting them, so I just nodded my head and agreed, that it was "strange".

We continued to drive for another hour or so, until the outskirts of Tirana, the capital. At this point it was totally dark except for a brilliant half-moon. And by dark, I mean, really dark. The son explained to me the situation: "Most of Albania's power comes from Bulgaria. When there is a storm, usually the power goes out. All Balkans have this problem." But, I protested….there was no storm. In fact it was quite clear above us, with stars shining. "Yes, maybe there is storm in Bulgaria." OK….maybe there is a storm in Bulgaria, maybe not – but the entire outskirts of Tirana, a city with a population of at least a million, was pitch black. Only the bouncing lights of oncoming traffic were visible, along with the occasional charcoal grill or electric-generator powered market on the side of the road. I buckled my seatbelt at this point, because it started to become positively post-apocalyptic. Dogs darted all around us, while others lay dead in the street. Battery-powered stereos blasted all around us, from groups of people sitting at cafes, or on the sidewalk, watching the procession of traffic in the still-blazing heat. Dust rose from the road as before, except it was all lit up by our headlights now, a yellowish tunnel that we drove along between the buildings.

Finally we reached the ring road, the most insane traffic merge I have ever seen in my life. Our road, a 4-lane feeder road, traversed 4 lanes of oncoming traffic, and merged into 4 lanes of traffic in the opposite direction. Imagine a 4-lane highway cutting across an American Interstate at rush hour, with no traffic lights, no stop signs, only one lone policeman with a baton, and this was what you would have. This was the famous "Tirana Rush", as is popularly known (inside my brain, at least). We plunged into the oncoming traffic with squealing brakes and furious honking, all accompanied by the whistling and shouting of the traffic cop. We passed within feet of him, and could hear him berating another driver in Albanian, banging on the hood of his car. But for what? What could you possibly do wrong, in this circumstance, when rules and laws of society are so flagrantly flouted? I closed my eyes as we swerved around a goat and made it into the innermost lane. We were in Tirana now. Here, life beats to a different drum.

I don't want to paint too unflattering a portrait of Albania, however. Although it makes for better (and more humorous) writing, to discuss the shortcomings of a country, Albania has proven itself to be more than accommodating. In fact, I'd venture to say it's one of the friendliest places I've been to in Europe. For example, my host here in Tirana (who found me wandering around the street at a quarter to 10) is a pleasant old man who carries rosary beads in his hands and smiles constantly (if not a little vacantly). Whenever I come back from walking in town, he asks me, "Tirana? Bene, o molto bene?" and I always give him a thumbs-up and say "Molto bene!" with gusto. He appreciates this.

The mini-market across the alley from my apartment is owned by a woman who speaks very little English. So when I asked for a bottle of water, she at first became embarrassed, then brightened up. She held up her finger, for me to wait, and ran into the back. Soon she reappeared, ushering in front of her a teenage girl who gave me a small smile and asked, "Can I help you?" After I had made the purchase she commenced to introduce me to every member of her family, which had come out to see me. This included the mother, the grandmother, two daughters, and a son. You could tell this was not common in Tirana, to have a foreigner buying water in their alley, and they were ready to impress him.

Tirana is a fairly wild place, in the sense that 100,000 dollar BMWs roar down the road, honking and screaming past everything, regardless of streetlights (if they're working), into dirt-strewn alleys. And the rip-offs are hilarious, whether it's the cars people are driving (the ubiquitous Italian or German license plates are a giveaway – why don't the police care?) or the "Yahoo!" fast food restaurant (using the exact same "Yahoo!" logo as the search engine), or the "Kolonat" fast food restaurant (exact same colors, menu as the famous American franchise…even the logo is the same golden arches, except slightly modified to make a "K" instead of an "M"). But at its heart the city beats with an energy that sometimes is lacking in northern European or American cities. Is it the heat? I often feel as if I'm in Beirut or some other Middle Eastern city, especially when I spy a mosque or hear the latest Turkish rap coming from the passing cars. It's invigorating, it feels like you're part of a large community, rather than an isolated individual.

Also, on a related note, there are termites chomping away at my bed. They never stop. They eat 24 hours a day. It boggles my mind. Do they not stop to swallow? Are they never full? Although, I suppose, what sort of sustenance are you getting from bed wood.

On an unrelated note, I've spent a lot of time thinking in Tirana, and have decided to come home on Thursday. So, I'll be around, enjoying the DC heat, beginning on the 26^th. My new email address is: johnnie.miller@gmail.com (my old one was hijacked), and I don't have a phone number…yet. But stay tuned.

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