Voda Voda Everyvhere

From Venice to Slovenia.

There are at least two places in Slovenia where it rains all the time.  The first is the caves of Postojna.  I´d never been in a cave before, so it was rather exciting when our tourguide said:

“Welcome!”

And then, without any detectable irony:

“To the largest cave system in the Karst region of Slovenia!”

Alvin smiled.  Nobody else really reacted much, but then the English tour was just whoever fell through the filters of the Slovenian, Italian, German, and French tours.

“I must say up front that photos, especially flash, is not allowed, as this damages the caves.  I´m sure we can all agree that this is bad.”  She paused.  “Can´t we?”  She seemed rather open to persuasion on the issue.  “And really, the better memory is in here.”  She points to her head.  “Don´t you agree?”

A few flash bulbs went off in response.

“Ah good.  Let´s go!”

And off we went to enjoy the largest cave system in the Karst region of Slovenia.  Raindrops kept falling on our heads, but that didn’t mean our eyes would soon be turning red.  Actually it meant that our heads would soon be growing stalagmites.

The other place in Slovenia where it rains all the time is the main town square of Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia.  They´ve outfitted a mesh of tubing above one small section, which sprays water down into the square.  On the ground below are cartoon signs with stormclouds and a message that reads something like: “This is the part of Slovenia with its own weather system.”

It is completely unclear why they’ve gone to the trouble to do this, but it’s wonderful in its oddity.

Bon Voyageo!

Writing this from a keyboard where I cant find the apostrophe. Must mean Im on vacation. Oh, there it is. I mean, oh, there it´s.

The great Somebody once said that you need to see Venice at least once before you die, so that was the first place I took Alvin. A lot of other people seem concerned about the Venice before Death issue, because the place was teeming. Even the pigeons in Piazza San Marco seemed to be a little irritated at the turisticos.  The empty gondolas wickered tempermentally in their stalls.

Tourism is funny. You pack your bags, you pack your delusions. God, this place would be just fantastic without all those tourists!

And you go around to the obvious sites, but one street and one standard deviation removed from the main crowd, and you think: hey, that´s right, baby, we´re coo´, we not like them.

And you enjoy the freeflow feeling of using the toilet by standing in your shower, then later you say to your waiter: no, no tourist menu for me.  We’ll take the fish du jour, I mean, dos journos.

Then minutes later you remember that you don´t know how to eat a fish with a head.  Thank goodness Alvin´s here.

This Subway is Rated M For Mature

I get all my local news from the subway.  People say this is a bad idea.  But those people probably don’t know that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt just bought a villa in Wannsee.

I learn all this and more from the “Berlin Windows,” which is a nickname for the subway monitors that show news, sports, and other local bits.

You can totally build a life from the information that comes out of these little hypnoscreens.  There’s a concert calendar, weather reports, exhibition previews, festival details, and artist spotlights.

Then there are the cartoons.

Until recently, there was just one, a daily single-panel comic called “Willmor of the Day.”  It was always preceded by a screen that said: “And now, for the Willmor of the Day.”  I think this screen served basically the same function as the block-letter ”YOU WILL DIE DROWNING IN BROWN MUCUS (IF YOU’RE LUCKY)” warnings that decorate cigarette cartons nowadays.

But smokers smoke, and watchers watch.

Willmor’s basically this creature who goes around Berlin having banal experiences.  So I could empathize.  But what I never managed to do was laugh.

Willmor goes to work.  “Oh no, I showed up on a Sunday again!”  And that’s it.

Willmor goes to a fish restaurant.  “Uh oh, I’m not a fish.  I better go find a Willmor restaurant.”  And that’s it.

I’m kinda making these up, but that’s the general spirit. 

Anyways, I’d gotten used to the G-rated humor of the Willmor of the Day, when this week along comes Moopsie (or something like that).

I gave Moopsie the fresh-from-a-coma once-over that I usually give Willmor.  All it was was a drawing of a pug dog sitting underneath a woman’s legs.  Even by Willmor’s bar, this was lame.  I mean, you draw a pug dog and that’s funny now?  So I looked harder.  Suddenly I realized that the dog was drinking from a tube that led from his mouth, upwards, and right between the woman’s legs…

The screen changed, leaving me gaping at a bulletin that Katie Holmes just bought a Vespa.

And Rain Will Make

Almost got run over again yesterday.

Sixth time this month?  I don’t know.  I’m losing track.  And my sense of mortality.

Cars scare me.  For starters, I’m not an eager driver, and also not a good one, since I have this problem with daydreaming.  That wasn’t such a good fit for Los Angeles.

“Should we drive or take the bus?”

Five years in L.A., and that question never came up.

“Should we drive or take the subway?”

Somebody might have said that once, as a joke.

In Berlin, on the other hand, I like that I rely on public transportation and don’t drive a car.  The downside is that pedestrians in Germany have roughly the status of plankton.  I think German drivers would brake if a dog ran into the road.

When I cross, they speed up.

Cyclists in their precious bike lanes are less fatal but even more bloodthirsty.  The bike lanes in Berlin are red, and I don’t think it’s paint.

So I was running through Tiergarten (Berlin’s ersatz Central Park) the other day, and I’d just escaped with my life again, which left me feeling angry and reborn.  And it started to rain.  Not in the pleasant singing-in-the kind of way either.

I figured:  I can tough it out.  I’m already wet.  Can’t actually get wetter now.  Finish your run.

Then my shoes started to capsize.  I figured it was time to head home.  I checked my waterproof-to-a-depth-of-100-meters watch and realized that it was broken.  Was I going to get the bends?

Then a shadow creeped up towards my left shoe.  I took a quick sidelong look and realized it was a tire tread.  I mean, this ISN’T EVEN A BIKE PATH!  WHAT IS WITH YOU PEOPLE?  BACK OFF!  I MEAN, WHAT THE FUC…

I completed my turn to find a man on a bicycle with this gargantuan umbrella, smiling and holding it over me as I ran.

I should have noticed it had stopped raining.

I tried my best to retrofit my scowl into a pleasant smile.  I’m sure it came off with the pleasantness of a rictus.  But he kept on smiling and pedaling, and gave me shelter until we parted ways at the next intersection.

I ran on, feeling better about people.  Well, everybody except myself.

Get Away From Me

“Well, do you know you can’t be wrong?  How do you know you can’t be wrong?”

 It seems like the last three years have been a bit rough for Nellie McKay.  She fought with her record company, got dumped by her record company, and aged at twice the rate of everybody else on the planet.

Her debut album Get Away From Me surfaced in 2004 inside a cellophane wrapper announcing 4-star reviews (from Rolling Stone magazine, among others), and a huge oversized Explicit Content warning.  Every article that breathed her name had lots of exclamation points.  I think the media was also contractually obliged to mention that she was only nineteen years old (!!) at least once per paragraph, or in the case of television appearances, three times per interviewer.  That made her appearance on The View a little awkward.

Well, time is a funny thing.  Three years later, speak her name, and most people will think that you just can’t pronounce Furtado very well.

Three years later, she is also mysteriously 25 years old.

It’s unfortunate, but then again it isn’t.  Her crackpot inventor style was never headed for the Top 40, anyways.  Get Away From Me is a big messy workshop with sawdust-covered songs all over the floor.  Exploring it is an experience, but you’re just as likely to find parachute pants as you are to find the next light bulb.

But it’s a great album.  Not many albums really burst with creativity.  Not many really try anything new at all.  One can get a certain sense of the range from her two Late Late Show appearances, one from this month and the other from when she was a 19-year-old 22-year-old.

For me, the good news is that she’s producing albums at a furious rate.  Her third album drops this month.

The bad news is that, at the rate she’s aging, she really has to hurry.