You may wonder what I've been up to. What have I been up to? Things got a little wild since I started working for Tamizdat, and well, I between school (like going to work, long days, much studying), work (writing album reviews for the site), ex-currics (tours, lectures, etc) and trying to get some other visions of Prague + work on several late and current projects – life has been too much to blog about. Wow, I just realized how much this is like that annoying part of a zine where the editor complains about how late the finished product is.
So I went to this insane festival in Mikulov, Moravia, which featured the big beat group Blue Effect and of course Plastic People of the Universe, Uz Jsme Doma and Marian Varga, who is this really eccentric keyboardist somewhere between Glenn Gould and Keith Emerson who used to be in the group Collegium Musicum. The trip was ½ the fun for me, and less than that for my unfortunate but good-humored friends who couldn't be on the bus with me (pozor: if you travel by bus out of Prague, get a freaking reservation, seriously!) so had to go to Brno and take a cab! to Mikulov (but were offered a lucrative franchise opp. For some dieting formula by their generous cabbie).
Turns out I have been to Mikulov before, five years ago when a friend convinced me that is was 'the real CZ' and I spent a week there drinking wine and reading the bible at the city pool. I was also trying to 'relearn' Latin, which could give you some indication of my stuck brain at the time.
Thank god for the long study to PhD-dom because it'll be a good while before I get Czechs and their music. The festival was open air, super cheap and you could just camp right outside the wall for free. Toilets however cost 5 crowns! There was constantly food cooking and beer flowing, the weirdest mix of music possible from 2pm to 2am (or longer, with friends I was convinced to leave early) from Czech Latin jazz to well, Marian Varga, post-punk, hippie rock, folk, accordion humorists and, like in the disco polo videos I know and love, always children on stage dancing around. And dogs, everywhere.
I was by myself for most of the first night and fell in immediately with some raucous Czechs who were addled enough that our mutual ability to communicate was no barrier. That is to say, I was offered weed by sign language. To toke, universal! Luckily enough for me I declined, so as to chart the insanity of the folks over the course of the evening. I save the juicy details (he!) for my dissertation, but let's just say that later when I said "…and then I realized that the one who was doing the surprisingly nimble interpretive dance to PPotU had a huge swastika tattoo on his forearm," I broke open a good conversation with another Czech punk friend, who told me that this type of 'hate speech' is illegal in CZ. Well, it's a start…
Still on the theme, went to an exhibit called "The Pope Smoked Dope" at the Museum of the City of Prague, which charted the history of big beat (bigbit) in CZ and 'psychedelic visual culture' mostly from hippie central, CA. An intense explosion of artifacts (over 800 in the exhibit) mostly album covers, posters, printed materials, put Czech big beat bands (with names like Flamingoes, The Matadors, The Roosters, Blue Five Dogs, Rebels, Primitives, The Awe telling you that they referenced mid-60s British Invasion although playing and recording later (the exhibit said that the first rock records were produced in 1968 tho I'm going to do more work on that number)). Anyway, am planning to get ahold of the curator and track down a lot of the music if possible. His catalog has some writing about how useless it would be to try to do a sociological study of Czech music from the 60s. Luckily, I still don't know most of those words in Czech so can pretend not to understand.
Also, seeing all those Dead posters and shit shocked me into total admission that there is some serious hippie regression going on in our dear beloved world of 2004 novy weird psych folk groovie death cult jams. Been listening to a lot of irritating posthardcore and you know what, it suits me better! Hating this fake love bullshit is making me more Matos every day? I just want to wear plastic clothes and listen to shiny techno?!? Only six days til c/o Kompakt fest Koln!
So to the subject line: Friday/Sat I was tagged along with Ememvoodoopoka to two shows, a festival in Brtnice and a place in Pisen. The Brtnice show was a two-day festival in the barn behind an architecture museum in Brtnice, a pretty damn small town boasting the relics of a castle and Sv. Julian, as well as a miniature Charles Bridge, complete with statues, over a creek. $2 admission, seven bands and a DJ tent doing some Czechtek-style trance and techno, a tea hut, beer hut, food stand, art exhibit and grounds covered with rope made into spider webs to go with the name: Pavucina. Got there in time to see Lajky, a six-piece sounding somewhere between Arcade Fire and Paris, Texas with hark! a female bass player who had a punchy voice to her male counterpart's hilariously effete indie boy stance. Emem play some dystopian krautrock with boogie moments, and my friend Martin jumps around and pumps his fists like a true leader. Brood, from Pottsdam, got the ubiquitous 15-yr-olds with dreads and short pants (romance) to slam with post-hardcore abandon. Tabletky were a local band whose lead singer looked like, well, Eric Weisbard actually, and who sang like Eddie Vedder. Serious presence. They had a 7-string guitarist and the crowd really loved them.
Or maybe they were really drunk. I am now approaching 10 years of going to shows pretty much continuously and I can say that I have never seen so many people as drunk as all the people seemed on Friday night at Pavucina. There were also 'cookies,' which I watched one person eat so many of that he immediately became ill. Others were just laying on the ground, shouting while dangerously nearby others were just peeing out into the night air. This is where I might tell you that I, having had a nice toast and tea, was looking at the sickeningly lovely moon and Mars, it was pretty bright out. I have never felt so unafraid but so alone as there, standing upright amid this nearly Bosch-ian spectacle. I slept, like most people, in the kulturni dum, in a sleeping bag on the stage. There was no women's room open, and there was a dead daddy longlegs in the men's sink that was so big looking, even in its ruined state, as to inspire great fear. They say you swallow three spiders a year, but this number is suddenly not so important as the size of each one. Ahh.
And Saturday I wrote around with Brood in their van to various small towns in CZ, looking for adventure until someone from Pavucina called saying they forgot their bag of cables, so we made a four hour return and back to Pisen so they could play with Emem at Palubkov, an all-ages club booked by teenagers and likely the meeting place of all the city's alternatypes. I forgot to mention Vicky, Emem's drummer's girlfriend, who did merch for the band and who, at Palubkov, secretly got very drunk. For whatever reason, the crowd was weird and not attentive, but a dedicated group raved for Brood, and we didn't end up leaving to return to Prague until 1am. Five + gear packed in a modest eurocar, I had the good sense to have had several glasses of Frankovka before getting in the car to make me sleepy, but lo! When Vicky decided to start throwing up out the window, I was shocked into awakeness, realizing that we had some intense mrla (fog) and sat shivering as V sat limply, waiting. The only thing worse than waiting to throw up is waiting for someone else to throw up. This is another reason to not have kids, although I'm pretty sure that true love involves not actually being grossed out by the vomit of said loved one. If this is true, I know in my heart that I have loved (and will never buy the cheap absinthe for you again, I'm sorry!) and will surely love again.
This missive will do nothing for my hits. No links, no photos, no pauses, but I think that it will likely be my last in Prague so I'm getting everything out. This week I have my main Czech test, my birthday (that's right it's on Wednesday you slackers, it's too late to send a card) and Friday is likely off to Koln.
WARNING, DEATH: Also, I will be dropping my grandma Carr's ashes in the Vltava on Wednesday and trying to think of some way to honor my great aunt Kay, who passed away on Friday after a month of intense hospital time. I've now lost four loved ones in the last two years and today even dreamed of my grandfather, who died when I was really young, too young to know him. Was at this castle Landstejn with Martin on Saturday and walking up a tower that was 700 years old, thinking what does it mean to be climbing these stairs to look out over this forest and grounds. Got caught in a flash rainstorm so we were the only ones up there, looking out. Am I telling all this to you now so you too see from this place? (I wouldn't be so naïve and selfish to presume) Would I go up if I could never tell anyone about it? I am sad for not knowing what my Aunt Kay might have seen and known that I didn't know to ask.
(please don't wait for me to ask).
8.22.2005
8.17.2005
v praze: required listening from CZ and PL
well, if you're reading this, you might be wondering what i've been up to, but i can't tell you now because i'm busy at work. so you should instead hunt down some tracks by these people:
Deuce from Poland, like crazy wonderful mix of my diamond sky high radical friend Luke Lucky Dragons Fishbeck and the artschool video explosion of Mixel Pixel. Also, he dude is part of what seems to be a rad collective that I would know about if I had time and money to read the Wire.
Kackala from the CZ. Umm, well, five women singing intense a capella covers, I mean, look at the picture fer christsakes - an all girl punk a capella troupe!
Band of Endless Noise also from Poland, who recorded their first album with two of the members of the Magic Carpaithians. Their new album, Riders On the Bikes, has this great sort of Thinking Fellers sounding song called "The Union of Those Driving Slow" and they also play the singing bowl - some psychfolkers took an extremely long walk down bushwick ave and ended up in Warsaw.
And Aktual, also from the CZ, early band of Milan Knizak and the Plastic People of the Universe. "Drop Acid You'll See." Indeed.
Deuce from Poland, like crazy wonderful mix of my diamond sky high radical friend Luke Lucky Dragons Fishbeck and the artschool video explosion of Mixel Pixel. Also, he dude is part of what seems to be a rad collective that I would know about if I had time and money to read the Wire.
Kackala from the CZ. Umm, well, five women singing intense a capella covers, I mean, look at the picture fer christsakes - an all girl punk a capella troupe!
Band of Endless Noise also from Poland, who recorded their first album with two of the members of the Magic Carpaithians. Their new album, Riders On the Bikes, has this great sort of Thinking Fellers sounding song called "The Union of Those Driving Slow" and they also play the singing bowl - some psychfolkers took an extremely long walk down bushwick ave and ended up in Warsaw.
And Aktual, also from the CZ, early band of Milan Knizak and the Plastic People of the Universe. "Drop Acid You'll See." Indeed.
8.08.2005
z prahy: new suits
The motley crue of mostly advanced Czech students boarded the bus Saturday, 9am, late, which is to say, way late by Czech standards. While most of the buses parked in the lot outside my bedroom balcony window are of the fancy, tinted windows take no prisoners tourism type, this was a good old fashioned excursion bus – something you want to attach speakers to and pile out of to steal a pee like a prankster of olde. The bus belched violently blue-purple haze from its rear whenever it was started up and inside the bus was like smelling a sharpie for too long until we started sailing the narrow winding curves of our random backwoods vylet [trip].
I confess. On Friday, the moje ucitelka asked 'one of the students in another class wants to know if it's okay if she brings her baby on the trip.' And of course no one raised their hands, and so, though my brain begged to defy gravity and stand up for the sanctity of the adult swim rule, I let go. So for the rest of this reading, set your TK drone box to "baby cackle/scream and every woman over 25 who wasn't me obeying their genes and fawning sickly sound." Granted I wouldn't want said woman not to come, but then she let said baby wander/scream/crawl all around the bus because she just assumed it was okay with everyone and that the baby would become 'group property' and people would pay attention to/help it – to an including at our sit down dinner. To je problem.
Whatevs, the trip. Went to the home of Karel Capak, likely mostly known to most for inventing the term 'robot' although until about 20 years ago he was prime comp. lit. material, the first moderni cesky spisovatel [writer] and a fine fine amateur gardener. His house, in Strz, was pretty modest and unlike most American museums, it was more exhibit than, don't know the curatorial term, "just as if he'd stepped out for a minute." There was a nice bowler hat and cane, but more interesting were pictures of him greeting other writers to Prague, like H.G. Wells, correspondences he kept with writers all over the world, and photos of interwar Prague in general. Capek's garden and first floor flooded the spring before he died, washing away the garden he loved - 1938 – it was said that he had severe depression and as someone who spent a life writing sci-fi/speculative dystopian fiction as leader of a cosmopolitan vanguard, it is little wonder what made him so smutny [sad]. He also loved his dog, Dasenka (I think my old Czech teacher used to call me this!) and wrote a children's story about a 'dog and kittie.' Reminds me that I want to buy bell hooks childrens' book.
In Pribram we went to a 19th century silver mine, wore hardhats and entered the mining area by a long double banister-like slide that you rode down on by a giant rectangle of felt. Mind you, there was a retired gentleman on the trip who often summoned the miracle of his pacemaker (he's the arch-conservative Proctor and Gamble guy on the trip who apparently argued that the Japanese interment camps 'weren't that bad). Sooo…this little slide thing was amazingly unsafe and fun, the mine was nuda [boring] but fun-boring (a little too close to Ikea's 'un-boring,' but maybe the same sentiment).
I decided in Breznice that one of my new things to do before I die is either a) wear a suit of armor or b) have a suit of armor made for me and then wear it. If there's ever a reality show about pretending to be a knight, please contact me. Armor is cool and swords and battle axes and all of those things are cool, but even cooler was that this total d&d Czech 16-yr-old boy was giving us the tour, and was like totally all over the weaponry. All the dudes in the group stood in the front, and most women were audibly nuda. Going to places like this reinforces some kind of bizarre traditionalist view of history as a procession of war, conquest, strategic marriage, serviceable oil paintings, relics, intricate monograms placed in unlikely places, and the creation of superlative braggarding at any cost "the first library to use shelves in Central Europe" !!! Well, I'm sure Benjamin would send thanks for the shelves before sliced bread at least (end of the aura of the loaf!). I had an undergrad moment of drawing the belltower from a bench near a lake while taking a break from the herd.
Our hotel was completely just us, but they wanted us to be three to a room. I often get a sense when staying at a hotel that everyone working at the hotel would rather no one was there at all, and this was def. the case v hotelu Kratochvil. [at the hotel 'short stay'!]. I roomed with a nice Jewish girl from Boston who is doing a dissertation on 20th Czech history, as by the end of day one everyone had found the person on the bus most similar to them and settled into that weird chat where one knows nothing of another and finds any topic acceptable for the sake of camaraderie. Anyway, Laura seems to rule.
We went to dinner and sat with the pacemaker man, Lorenzo, and the Midwestern medical R&D guy turned missionary (who explained that his wife wasn't with because she runs a camp where they teach English to disadvantaged Czech youth using the Bible…which, I'm afraid to say, I might have to think as more than 70% unacceptable in my brain) who might be the perfect example of someone you can total disagree but completely get along with – an actual factual good Christian living what seems to be a humble and just life (Isaac too). I ate smazeny syr [fried cheese], which, you'll be unsurprised to know is becoming my favorite Czech dish.
At 10pm they kicked us out of the dining room and into the bar, across a five foot hallway, and immediately the group got engrossed in some card game using another deck of cards with hearts, balls, leaves and TK. They were playing a game called TK which seemed a lot like Uno and had all the non-Czechs confused because of the difference in suits. I will likely buy and bring back some of these cards, wanting to start a Brooklyn version of the PacNW game night institution I know that folks like Brooks long for. Love cards, not just cause in the twinkle of the slot machine and dim lights our table resembled some enchanted Bruegel painting, but because they are fun-boring too, the perfect mental state for great conversation, antics and the beginning of friendships.
I confess. On Friday, the moje ucitelka asked 'one of the students in another class wants to know if it's okay if she brings her baby on the trip.' And of course no one raised their hands, and so, though my brain begged to defy gravity and stand up for the sanctity of the adult swim rule, I let go. So for the rest of this reading, set your TK drone box to "baby cackle/scream and every woman over 25 who wasn't me obeying their genes and fawning sickly sound." Granted I wouldn't want said woman not to come, but then she let said baby wander/scream/crawl all around the bus because she just assumed it was okay with everyone and that the baby would become 'group property' and people would pay attention to/help it – to an including at our sit down dinner. To je problem.
Whatevs, the trip. Went to the home of Karel Capak, likely mostly known to most for inventing the term 'robot' although until about 20 years ago he was prime comp. lit. material, the first moderni cesky spisovatel [writer] and a fine fine amateur gardener. His house, in Strz, was pretty modest and unlike most American museums, it was more exhibit than, don't know the curatorial term, "just as if he'd stepped out for a minute." There was a nice bowler hat and cane, but more interesting were pictures of him greeting other writers to Prague, like H.G. Wells, correspondences he kept with writers all over the world, and photos of interwar Prague in general. Capek's garden and first floor flooded the spring before he died, washing away the garden he loved - 1938 – it was said that he had severe depression and as someone who spent a life writing sci-fi/speculative dystopian fiction as leader of a cosmopolitan vanguard, it is little wonder what made him so smutny [sad]. He also loved his dog, Dasenka (I think my old Czech teacher used to call me this!) and wrote a children's story about a 'dog and kittie.' Reminds me that I want to buy bell hooks childrens' book.
In Pribram we went to a 19th century silver mine, wore hardhats and entered the mining area by a long double banister-like slide that you rode down on by a giant rectangle of felt. Mind you, there was a retired gentleman on the trip who often summoned the miracle of his pacemaker (he's the arch-conservative Proctor and Gamble guy on the trip who apparently argued that the Japanese interment camps 'weren't that bad). Sooo…this little slide thing was amazingly unsafe and fun, the mine was nuda [boring] but fun-boring (a little too close to Ikea's 'un-boring,' but maybe the same sentiment).
I decided in Breznice that one of my new things to do before I die is either a) wear a suit of armor or b) have a suit of armor made for me and then wear it. If there's ever a reality show about pretending to be a knight, please contact me. Armor is cool and swords and battle axes and all of those things are cool, but even cooler was that this total d&d Czech 16-yr-old boy was giving us the tour, and was like totally all over the weaponry. All the dudes in the group stood in the front, and most women were audibly nuda. Going to places like this reinforces some kind of bizarre traditionalist view of history as a procession of war, conquest, strategic marriage, serviceable oil paintings, relics, intricate monograms placed in unlikely places, and the creation of superlative braggarding at any cost "the first library to use shelves in Central Europe" !!! Well, I'm sure Benjamin would send thanks for the shelves before sliced bread at least (end of the aura of the loaf!). I had an undergrad moment of drawing the belltower from a bench near a lake while taking a break from the herd.
Our hotel was completely just us, but they wanted us to be three to a room. I often get a sense when staying at a hotel that everyone working at the hotel would rather no one was there at all, and this was def. the case v hotelu Kratochvil. [at the hotel 'short stay'!]. I roomed with a nice Jewish girl from Boston who is doing a dissertation on 20th Czech history, as by the end of day one everyone had found the person on the bus most similar to them and settled into that weird chat where one knows nothing of another and finds any topic acceptable for the sake of camaraderie. Anyway, Laura seems to rule.
We went to dinner and sat with the pacemaker man, Lorenzo, and the Midwestern medical R&D guy turned missionary (who explained that his wife wasn't with because she runs a camp where they teach English to disadvantaged Czech youth using the Bible…which, I'm afraid to say, I might have to think as more than 70% unacceptable in my brain) who might be the perfect example of someone you can total disagree but completely get along with – an actual factual good Christian living what seems to be a humble and just life (Isaac too). I ate smazeny syr [fried cheese], which, you'll be unsurprised to know is becoming my favorite Czech dish.
At 10pm they kicked us out of the dining room and into the bar, across a five foot hallway, and immediately the group got engrossed in some card game using another deck of cards with hearts, balls, leaves and TK. They were playing a game called TK which seemed a lot like Uno and had all the non-Czechs confused because of the difference in suits. I will likely buy and bring back some of these cards, wanting to start a Brooklyn version of the PacNW game night institution I know that folks like Brooks long for. Love cards, not just cause in the twinkle of the slot machine and dim lights our table resembled some enchanted Bruegel painting, but because they are fun-boring too, the perfect mental state for great conversation, antics and the beginning of friendships.
8.05.2005
z praze: Rebelove, the Czech Grease
I have now been in czech school for one week and living that true definition of sophmoric in that I believe that I might understand some things, or be able to speak because it makes sense in books and in my head, but it comes out all spit, halt and blah when I'm trying to actually communicate. Luckily, I have made a friend - Lorenzo - who is good at just throwing things out there to see if they work, and it makes it easier for me to follow suit. Of course, Lorenzo speaks four other languages, so for instance when I am returning the impulse buy jacket because it has missing buttons and I say: rada vymenit bundu protoze tam chybi knofliky. Musim mit za novou?
Lorenzo says: oh yes, knofliky, it's the same in German.
Then I imagine his brain having these resevoirs of languages from which he skims vocab for a new pond: Czech. Me, I'm out here with a shovel in hand, digging for a dam. I'm about calf deep now.
Today starts my first day of *work* for Tamizdat, this fabulous online distro of independent Central European music. The guys I will be working with are both in bands but no one will tell me their bands' names. The shop and office is on the fourth floor accessed by an interior plaza behind a buzzer-only door advertised only by a sandwich board - how's that for exclusive? And, as mentioned in an earlier post, there are bowls around for various pets that follow their owners to work on occasion.
Meanwhile, I've been listening to a lot of Czech radio - last night was 'oldies' on Olympic radio - by oldies I mean Czech, American and British oldies, from early weird doo wop I've never heard through, well, through the Wings catalog. A lot of the Wings catalog. The Czechs are not afraid of the solo Beatles catalogs at all, and that means I have to not be either, I guess. "Jealous Guy" and beyond.
One other music-related tidbit: we've been listening to Rebelove in class, talking about case endings and what have you. Rebelove is a mid-70s soundtrack turned film about teenagers in love and all that claptrap set to Czech versions of such songs as Petula Clark's "Downtown" nebo "Pata" or Nancy Sinatra's "Sugar Town" nebo "S, S, S" (actually s hacek, shhh shhh shhh) done with much more false exhuberance than the original, even. Will likely send the latter to Ms. Sara Shurr who runs Sugar Town in Philly, and will get a huge kick out of the rendition.
PERSONAL NOTE:
Well, I've only been gone 8 days but I'm feeling a little homesick, can you believe it? Not just for Monster either, but for New York (was remembering that I hadn't seen any outdoor movies at Bryant Park, one of my favorite things) and all those things. I know, every silly publicist I email to say 'no I haven't listened to X because I'm in Prague" emails me back 'I'm so jealous' and I shouldn't write this, but I really miss being aroun people I love. No, it's not that I miss NY, it's that I wish there were some people to share my time with - thus the blog (ya, sentimental interlude). I, for instance, haven't been out at all past 8pm only to use the internet, which for me is downright criminal. I've also only had jedno pivo a neni absinthe. Eveyone in school is very serious I think, and I haven't even emailed my Czech contacts yet. Well, I should do that right now...
This weekend: going to Karel Capek's house and some mining museums and likewise 'real czech' type tourist activities, with the class, so will be gone. More gossip upon return.
Lorenzo says: oh yes, knofliky, it's the same in German.
Then I imagine his brain having these resevoirs of languages from which he skims vocab for a new pond: Czech. Me, I'm out here with a shovel in hand, digging for a dam. I'm about calf deep now.
Today starts my first day of *work* for Tamizdat, this fabulous online distro of independent Central European music. The guys I will be working with are both in bands but no one will tell me their bands' names. The shop and office is on the fourth floor accessed by an interior plaza behind a buzzer-only door advertised only by a sandwich board - how's that for exclusive? And, as mentioned in an earlier post, there are bowls around for various pets that follow their owners to work on occasion.
Meanwhile, I've been listening to a lot of Czech radio - last night was 'oldies' on Olympic radio - by oldies I mean Czech, American and British oldies, from early weird doo wop I've never heard through, well, through the Wings catalog. A lot of the Wings catalog. The Czechs are not afraid of the solo Beatles catalogs at all, and that means I have to not be either, I guess. "Jealous Guy" and beyond.
One other music-related tidbit: we've been listening to Rebelove in class, talking about case endings and what have you. Rebelove is a mid-70s soundtrack turned film about teenagers in love and all that claptrap set to Czech versions of such songs as Petula Clark's "Downtown" nebo "Pata" or Nancy Sinatra's "Sugar Town" nebo "S, S, S" (actually s hacek, shhh shhh shhh) done with much more false exhuberance than the original, even. Will likely send the latter to Ms. Sara Shurr who runs Sugar Town in Philly, and will get a huge kick out of the rendition.
PERSONAL NOTE:
Well, I've only been gone 8 days but I'm feeling a little homesick, can you believe it? Not just for Monster either, but for New York (was remembering that I hadn't seen any outdoor movies at Bryant Park, one of my favorite things) and all those things. I know, every silly publicist I email to say 'no I haven't listened to X because I'm in Prague" emails me back 'I'm so jealous' and I shouldn't write this, but I really miss being aroun people I love. No, it's not that I miss NY, it's that I wish there were some people to share my time with - thus the blog (ya, sentimental interlude). I, for instance, haven't been out at all past 8pm only to use the internet, which for me is downright criminal. I've also only had jedno pivo a neni absinthe. Eveyone in school is very serious I think, and I haven't even emailed my Czech contacts yet. Well, I should do that right now...
This weekend: going to Karel Capek's house and some mining museums and likewise 'real czech' type tourist activities, with the class, so will be gone. More gossip upon return.
8.02.2005
z praze: fresh morning rain
Prague, pt II:
I am currently listening to The Cure at some kind of hippie punk bike pot haze hot summer hangout. A man sprayed me with liquid oxygen when I walked in, then laughed in my face for a full minute when I told him it was like 'fresh morning rain.' He has been repeating these words to everyone who comes in, everyone who gets the rain face. He's got a huge red/blonde afro and keeps screaming czech/gibberish insanity into an internet phone connection and laughing hysterically. These people just let me use their internet and don't give a damn. There's a dog on a leather couch next to me.
Czechs love their dogs. Expats, the snarky boring idiot kind who seem to write exclusively for Prague Post, don't like the dogs. I like a good dog, a beagle looking thing following leashless down a cobblestone street and occasionally windowshoping only to find itself lost in the sea of feet. There's nothing more life affirming than seeing a dog recognize its owner from across a square, then it running like some animal kingdom porn at top speed slo mo in epic joy. Gross.
Today was the first day of class. Love the serious older student - four Americans, one Greek, two Germans, one Swede, one Belgian and one Camaroonian. An unlikely batch of humans if you ever saw them. Our teacher made us play two games that would never happen in the States: the first was 'tell me some stereotypes about X people' and she listed Skots, Germans, French. No one would budge on that one, except a German, of course, who confessed. The other was when the teacher asked one student to sit in a chair in the middle of the room while another stood behind pantomiming everyday tasks. She had to guess 'how often' he did these tasks, without knowing what they were. It was like some 50s standup or something.
I'm trying to think of other hilarious things, but really I've been sort of out of sorts knowing that my aunt who is in the hospital is likely passing away this week. I talked to her today on the phone at the hospital and she was in that delirious morphine state where breath becomes more sounding than words. What do you say? I've gotten sadly good at these conversations, having had them many times over the last few years. Never hesitate to say I love you, I have learned though I'm generally bad at those words from my 1/2 wasp upbringing.
That's all for now. Here's something that passes for headline news in the CZ, mind you, not for the day but for the last few days.
Police steps at CzechTek come under renewed fire
A decision by Czech police to break-up a techno music festival in Mlynec, west Bohemia, at the weekend has continued to draw political fire - from both the opposition and some members of the government. On Saturday around 1,000 police in riot gear forcibly broke up the techno party - attended by some 5,000 visitors - at the request of landowners who claimed visitors had damaged their property. Police clashed with dozens of partygoers, using tear gas and water cannons - leading to score of minor injuries on both sides. Around 20 people required medical attention.
Although the Interior Minister Frantisek Bublan defended police steps as "necessary", others, including the country's president, Vaclav Klaus, have criticised the move, with the president saying that the use tear gas and water cannons was "inexcusable". Mr Klaus called the move a "gross blunder" and has already said he will call on the country's prime minister for an explanation.
Others, including opposition MP for the right-of-centre Civic Democrats, Ivan Langer, called Saturday's use of force "unprecedented" - in his view evocative of police brutality in former Czechoslovakia preceding the fall of Communism in 1989.
I am currently listening to The Cure at some kind of hippie punk bike pot haze hot summer hangout. A man sprayed me with liquid oxygen when I walked in, then laughed in my face for a full minute when I told him it was like 'fresh morning rain.' He has been repeating these words to everyone who comes in, everyone who gets the rain face. He's got a huge red/blonde afro and keeps screaming czech/gibberish insanity into an internet phone connection and laughing hysterically. These people just let me use their internet and don't give a damn. There's a dog on a leather couch next to me.
Czechs love their dogs. Expats, the snarky boring idiot kind who seem to write exclusively for Prague Post, don't like the dogs. I like a good dog, a beagle looking thing following leashless down a cobblestone street and occasionally windowshoping only to find itself lost in the sea of feet. There's nothing more life affirming than seeing a dog recognize its owner from across a square, then it running like some animal kingdom porn at top speed slo mo in epic joy. Gross.
Today was the first day of class. Love the serious older student - four Americans, one Greek, two Germans, one Swede, one Belgian and one Camaroonian. An unlikely batch of humans if you ever saw them. Our teacher made us play two games that would never happen in the States: the first was 'tell me some stereotypes about X people' and she listed Skots, Germans, French. No one would budge on that one, except a German, of course, who confessed. The other was when the teacher asked one student to sit in a chair in the middle of the room while another stood behind pantomiming everyday tasks. She had to guess 'how often' he did these tasks, without knowing what they were. It was like some 50s standup or something.
I'm trying to think of other hilarious things, but really I've been sort of out of sorts knowing that my aunt who is in the hospital is likely passing away this week. I talked to her today on the phone at the hospital and she was in that delirious morphine state where breath becomes more sounding than words. What do you say? I've gotten sadly good at these conversations, having had them many times over the last few years. Never hesitate to say I love you, I have learned though I'm generally bad at those words from my 1/2 wasp upbringing.
That's all for now. Here's something that passes for headline news in the CZ, mind you, not for the day but for the last few days.
Police steps at CzechTek come under renewed fire
A decision by Czech police to break-up a techno music festival in Mlynec, west Bohemia, at the weekend has continued to draw political fire - from both the opposition and some members of the government. On Saturday around 1,000 police in riot gear forcibly broke up the techno party - attended by some 5,000 visitors - at the request of landowners who claimed visitors had damaged their property. Police clashed with dozens of partygoers, using tear gas and water cannons - leading to score of minor injuries on both sides. Around 20 people required medical attention.
Although the Interior Minister Frantisek Bublan defended police steps as "necessary", others, including the country's president, Vaclav Klaus, have criticised the move, with the president saying that the use tear gas and water cannons was "inexcusable". Mr Klaus called the move a "gross blunder" and has already said he will call on the country's prime minister for an explanation.
Others, including opposition MP for the right-of-centre Civic Democrats, Ivan Langer, called Saturday's use of force "unprecedented" - in his view evocative of police brutality in former Czechoslovakia preceding the fall of Communism in 1989.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)