Thursday, February 16, 2006

LAnd of a Thousand Rock Stars

More from that memorable trip, this time in LA.

My buddy Q and I spent some time there last month, where everyone seems to think they're either a rock star, a very personal friend of a rock star (by virtue of some work they did for the rock star's label back in '02), or god - meaning several levels below a rock star.

In this strange, strange place, truth is secondary to attention-grabbing headline-speak. Every time we were introduced to people the story would shift. A friend of ours had "just met these guys from Israel on the street", we were "punk guys who have their own teeny underground radio station that plays the Casualties all the time", and several other random permutations. My memory for lies isn't what it used to be. But we certainly hadn't just met, and it wasn't "on the street" etc..

We were shown a good night out on the town by this person. It was her friend's birthday, which we celebrated by bar-hopping, consuming copious amounts of alcohol and the so-called alcohol known as "American beer", and finally ended up at birthday boy's apartment. Inside was the usual party scene, with a clear center of attention: strewn on the couch to one side was a guy with telltale emo hair (front swept to one side in the least natural look possible, streaked), surrounded by three girls. "Another rockstar wannabe", I thought. Everyone seemed to be talking with him or discussing him.

Q and I sat down on the couch next to him, and between Jaeger shots (all that was left at that point) we struck up a conversation. This guy's name is DJ. really. As I was talking with him, it was hard not to miss the black bandaid stuck on his right cheek, with white skull-and-crossbones imprint. Two of the three girls around him had the very same bandaid, thus removing any suspicion that he, heaven forfend, actually needed one. No, this was part of that whole rediculous fashion thing "punk"'s become.

So I started by asking him very basic questions about his band ("band, eh? what do you do in the band? your name's 'DJ'? are you one?").. He seemed quite surprised to be meeting anyone who doesn't immediately fall down in worship. Q took it a step further, though.. [warning: you have to know something about rock and punk, past and present, to get this.]

"So what music do you guys play?" he asks. We both know full well this has got to be some cookie-cutter, connect-the-dots mall-punk emo crap. We were curious what he'd answer. "We play rock, basically, yeah.." "REALLY?", Q leans over with his best fake 'sure I care about you' expression, "rock? like AC/DC?" "No, not really".. "so, rock.. like Motorhead, right?". I'm dying at this point. This brilliant man had taken everything I've been telling him for years about what rock's really about, where its heart and soul is, and was shoving it in this guy's face.

"no, not really, more like Green Day stuff". Guilty, I'm thinking, of rock-star wannabeism of the first degree! I'm in seventh heaven. A DVD case of this band's tour was lying on the table in front of us. Q asks him about it, and he starts telling stories of how they toured every corner of the planet five zillion times in LA-speak.

Ah, LA speak: in this language, whilst grinning and sounding spaced out, the word "fuckin'" is liberally sprinkled everywhere, it replaces virtually all commas and periods ("it was fuckin like fuckin yeah man fuckin..") and attached itself to all and's and but's (and fuckin wow man.. it was like, you know how there's this friend of yours whose like fuckin the great party animal you know? but fuckin these guys were way crazier!"). His friend across the room, with bandaid placed horizontally across the base of his nose giving him that intellectual, boxer look, grunts in agreement. It was a rather amusing sight.

When our "friend" DJ returns to the issue of the DVD, Q eggs him on. He starts getting all faux-excited, and finally says "oh my god, I've GOT to have that DVD!". I know this guy. he'd never talk like this to anyone. It was hysterical.

Anyway, I'm not really going anywhere with this. I guess you had to be there!

Monday, February 13, 2006

Hypothermic in London

A tale of loss, the human condition and irresistable urges, all in beautiful London.

I love London. I've been to New York and LA, but London just cries out "me!" like no other. Everything a through-and-through urbanite like myself would want, without the loneliness and insignifigance I feel radiating from the other two. On the way back to Israel, my friend - we'll call him "Q", heh heh - and I had a 20-hour stopover there before heading back to the land where everyone's doing you a favor...

What would transpire in that time was completely unplanned, which is what made it so fun. Q and I showed up, met up with a friend of his - she was terrific to be with, a party animal yet somehow without an ounce of potentially offputting hedonism - hit some bars, met another friend and we were all having a great time until.. curfew hour came. 11 o'clock tick-tock, that was it! The bars shut down faster than government agency computers at 1 PM.

So, she invited us over to her place. We took a bus down near her area, turned some streets, and then walked down a row of identical-looking London red-brick houses, into one, up to the top floor, and into her apartment. At this point I feel I must point out that NOTHING HAPPENED, so all pervs can lay down their, ahem, arms. But it was still very enjoyable, the perfect end to our trip. We spoke late into the night on issues of punk, Israeli "legal alien" dilemmas, memories from the mother-land, and a fair share of politics in light of the new post-modern relativist thing going on. Sometime I've got to write my views on that. remind me. Riiight. Anyway, it gets time to leave. 3 AM, 4 hours to go to our flight, and we have to get back to our temporary pad, pack and catch a bus over to the airport. This is when things start going awry.

We step out into the cold, backtrack whence we came, and it hits me - I forgot my glasses at her place.

These are not cheap. and I need them. No problem, I figure, we'll go back and find her apartment. Easier said than done! We never took her proper address. There were around 10 apartments, and all I could remember was that this place wasn't one of the first two. So we're talking anywhere between apartments 3 and 9. It's freezing. To make matters worse, neither of us had the girl's number OR a cellphone, rendering any calls for help simultaneously useless and impossible. So, as Q paces to battle impending hypothermia, I run around buzzing top-floor apartments at 3AM. "Excuse me, sir, I'm sorry to bother you at such a late hour, but I've left something important in the apartment next door and for some reason they don't answer. If you could just buzz me in..." Must've been fun for them to hear.

4 buildings, three out-and-out curse-sessions, one classic "do you have any idea what time it is?!!", and an "I doubt that very much, the woman next door is very old" later, I finally hit the right button. Several times. Apparently this terrified the girls half to death and they greeted me with a knife and a carefully aimed deoderant stick. That's a stick, not spray, which they had planned to throw at me. this plan was based on the assumption that as a highly-trained lethal assasin, I'd be so overtaken by laughter that I'd be rendered instantly powerless.

So, time's a little short but we can now finally get on our way. It's freezing, sooo damn cold! figure we'll call for a cab. At a public phone, I dial the one number our now traumatized friend had given me, and the obligatory Indian/Pakistani answers. Many rephrases and clarifications later, he says the cab will be there in "10 minutes". The 20 that ensued were the coldest I've felt since my glorious army days. fun fun fun. The two of us could be seen hopscotching, running in circles and cursing at the top of our lungs.. this was straight out of "Band of Brothers". I call back and he says "oh, sorry, we don't have any taxis in the end", ignoring the fact I'd given him the number of our public phone, anticipating trouble... At this point we miss the once-an-eternity bus that could get us home. We resort to strategically placed ambushes round a major interesection to catch a cab, and *6* perfectly empty ones go by before one stops for us. Apparently nearly all cabs on the roads have actually been ordered by someone, in stark contrast to the rather anarchic taxi conditions back home.

But we're finally on a cab and, with a bit of luck, we're still ok. About an hour to take it home, have him wait while we pack faster than that one Indonesian who had an internet connection the day before the tsunami, and get the hell over to the bus stop. We pull up outside our apartment, and Q steps out of the cab. With a look of fierce determination, sweat on his brow and teeth clentched, he announces: "I'm gonna have to take a dump". Arguing was out of the question (you have to know the guy) and so it was that, with meter running, he spent some of the most expensive "alone time" in recent memory.

Since you're interested, we ended up taking the cab all the way to the airport - the map I used to try to find our bus stop was just plain defective, I tell you! - which cost us roughly half the GDP of a small Pacific country.

But I still love London.

Me? Blog?

It's gotten a hold of me! AHHH! get it off!

I'm 27 (in 2006), single, male, Jewish, am relatively not messed up by organized theologies or crashing, failed relationships (by which I mean there haven't been any), am completely incapable of bullshitting. You'll probably see that here. Love music of the more independent rock variety, and play in several bands. I find partisanship and deceitfulness to be the dumbest, most confounding signs of our time, am essentially an optimist, get excited about down-to-earth people, ideas and art, have a nasty lazy streak sometimes and am not as self-confident as these last few sentences would have you believe. But yeah, I guess I'm ok.

I've had an uneasy relationship with online interaction simulators/enhancers/userpers for a while... For example, I couldn't stomach the idea of online dating services - and I've stuck to that doctrine to this very day! - even at my loneliest. It just seemed like a final concede of defeat. And worse, it seemed to say our lives have gotten the best of us. That we're really too busy to get out there and meet in person, our standards are too high, let's now meet online where we can get loads of information on each other and make sure we're juuust the right temperature before we pop the potato out of the microwave.. It made perfect sense. it was clean, scientific and pragmatic. It was depressing. It meant no old-fashioned romance in my book, and that's what I couldn't take. Every day not succuming online dating sites, I'm quite proud of myself.

And blogging - what was that all about? What induced people to write all their personal crap? It seemed like the same sad story.. For me, stepping away from the screen and out of your house was and is the only reality. Not that I do it often enough, but I enjoy it through and through when I do. All the witty comments in the world, even when coming from very real people, can't hold a candle to meeting them! So why? why?

Here's the real, unexciting reason: I found that I have an unexplained tendency to spill every once in a while. I'd figure I ought to write an old friend in the States, ponder how there's nothing to say ("there's never anything to say!"), start writing whatever's in my head, and find a twisted, sprawling letter half an hour later. And I'd go back and look at it. And I'd see that it was good - not the writing ("uch! this could be worded SO much better! damn 'send' button") - but my feeling after writing it. Anecdotes would pile up, thoughts - some temporary and some reconsidered and revised to the point of doctrine - I had to write something. So here it is.

But people, I ask only one thing: sitting at home reading blogs can be fun/interesting/informative, but don't let it get a hold of you. Get out there and LIVE, BABY! This comes from el numero uno wild child on the block, I assure you all...

No idea what direction this blog will take - political, personal, romantic whining, music adulation, Fugazi call-to-arms - but heeere we go!