I leave for Europe (Lagos, Portugal, specifically) on Tuesday. The dispatches from the continent will occur here. Rectify your non-reading of this blog starting... now.

It's nice to lay the backpack down. (Relatively) frequent updates coming soon.

Also, huzzah for the midterm elections! Now that we've taken both houses away from the paleolithically barbaric right and given them over to the disgustingly spineless left we can all at last rest in peace until the senior senator from Arizona wins the 2008 elections and finally delivers what we've all been waiting for: a president who wrestled. And none of that Minnesota gov'nuh wrestling, either... I'm talking good ol' fashioned take downs, knee drags and sprawls. Looks like 6 points to Democracy for the pin and the win.

The above was taken sometime in... August. Yeah. August. September? August. September? One of those. You can see the faint beginnings of my playoff beard (since shaven thanks to a two point loss to Oregon State... yes, that Oregon State), indicating this was likely taken after USC's shit-stomping of Arkansas in Fayetteville on Sept 2. My hair is now nearing mini-'fro proportions mitigated only by the medium of a beanie-curled Julius Caesar look. There is/was a small plastic tumbler of vodka in the backpack pictured above, and it was tasty. Due to a small miracle I am still somehow in possession of the aviators I was wearing that day, though for some reason they smell of olives now. I gave the beach mat away to the gang at Atlantis Books when I left Santorini island.

This photo was taken at Praia da Batata about ten minutes walk from Lagos, Portugal; this one was courtesy of Magda my incredibly Polish co-worker. I'm fairly certain our thoroughly British co-co-worker Annabel has another version though I wouldn't be surprised if the UK's disgusting security measures confiscated her camera upon her return. I was amazingly, proudly American that day with my 37.5 oz. of Super Bock, a terrible tasting Portuguese lager available for less than the monetary equivalent of two buttons and a bit of string. It wasn't a forty, but it was close enough. Home is only a large container of para-malt liquor away.

This is seriously the only picture I have of me since late July. I noticed when looking through the pictures I had taken and uploaded onto my Flickr account that there's actually not much worthwhile in there; my skills as a photographer are clearly lacking, but it's also clear that my emphasis on moving through cities seeing "the sights" was so emphatically, horribly wrong as to somehow retroactively make me embarassed in the poses standing in front of random statues and museums. It took theft on a disturbing and effectively death-like scale to make me see otherwise. I was and am glad I didn't have a camera. Walking and biking and driving and boating and planing (not to mention the trains and their useless, overrated Eurail passes) through Europe without having to frame every scene and consider every tableau with an eye towards its postcard appropriateness, avoiding the danger of regarding sunsets and cliffs and beaches as photo-ops... I wouldn't have chosen it, but I'm glad that's how it turned out.

So, yeah, I'm going to rely on all the people I met and whose emails I collected and whose cameras I imposed myself upon to email after I get back with whatever (indisputiably drunken) pictures they have of me; for now, though, there's the admittedly awkward pic above.

For the record, if you enjoy your health do not ask me if I'm a fan of the Da Vinci Code. The short answer is "no". The long answer involves four letter words, Herodotus, blunt objects to the temple and a half hour long diatribe about how sad it is that the sight of the Vitruvian Man makes people think about Dan Brown and not, say, one of the broadest, deepest, most sidereal minds in human history, so clearly outstripping Goethe, Newton, Leibniz, Aristotle, et al. it ought to be a crime to reference a fourth-rate mystery novel before the single greatest example of the possibilities of the human race. I can rest at peace knowing at least one crime will be committed after I brain you for saying you loved Angels and Demons, too.

Here I was, double espresso having diureticated straight through the shallow watered Dutch toilets (and there is something hideously wrong with partially immersed fecal matter, something atavistic and cruel), body gyroscoping around the freshly BM'd core of me, free, loose, in charge of an empty and waiting poker table and sweating like a soon-to-be-guilty maniac in my skull cap beanie (is it intimidating enough? should I wear it lower?) in this foreignly air conditioned casino ("Whaddaya mean you close the entrances and exits to conserve energy? Have you seen Vegas? It's in the desert. They use eight count prawns to wipe their asses and gold toothpicks to bring you olives because that way they have more heft when you throw them away.")

Being this disjointed was not going to help me win this poker tournament. I needed a drink, badly.

I was weak from over eating. Foreign substances - strange, earthy, bubbling, dangerously pale - lurched through my veins, druggy constipation backed up for days leaving me nervous, twitching like Univision static: uniformly chaotic but with a certain suspect Latin tint to our random oscillations, an insistent almost panicked need for rhythm to direct unseen and unspent energies. This was the lull before the players arrived. I was alone and crazy with the anticipation, sensing something large and unbearable about to occur. I could feel the Fear vibrating from the scuffed velveteen of the tables, from the empty hole where the cash box had been, from every pore of the animal that once owned the leather skin upholstery supporting my elbows, and it was sweet. I was wretched from the sweetness of it, and anyone who walked by could see it pour off my face.

"Is this the tournament? The poker tournament?" The guy had greasy black hair curled into a Barry Melrose mullet, and a slick three piece suit made sad and lonely by the loose threads at the cuff. I despised him instantly, my answer to his question the outraged silence of a monk interrupted mid-koan. He fled to the outer tables to wait and drink the free water offered out of cheap styrofoam cups. Nothing to do now but maintain, I supposed. I certainly wouldn't drink the water to sate my thirst; it didn't have nearly the alcoholic percentage I needed.

The mundane comings and goings of every casino were each in their place: insistent slot machine noise, the sad sheen of cocktail waitress nylon stretched across too many eyes, crowds hushed with greed, the dry flat smell of desperation, blackjack green and fake-mahogany brown and virulent purple, and, of course, Filipinos, Vietnamese and all of Southeast Asia represented in its fine diminished glory. Once you get an eye for Indonesia and the southern jungle nations and the islands, especially the Philippines, you begin to notice that there isn't a casino in the world complete without at least three or four thinly moustached guys with brown skin and too-big jackets and, somewhere in there, a witheringly competent looking female specimen. Despite the minor differences the similarities to a minor casino in Vegas were disconcerting. I felt out of my skin, like my scalp was razor thin with enormous pressures building up from the inside, making certain features of my face bulge slightly and alerting everyone near me that soon, very soon, there'd be a confrontation. Jules from Pulp Fiction whispered into my ear about "brain detail".

I won't even go into my state of mind when they checked my passport at the casino entrance. The line to get in was agonizingly long and my greed - for a seat at the 80 person tourney, for a stack of chips, for my chance at glory and money and the insanity that would ensue - was pounding at my temples and screaming bloody murder into the liquid in my eyes. Pretty soon there'd be vitreous humour all over the floor and I'd be stuck standing there, laughing my blind head off. By the time I got up to the attendant I could already feel the thin, flaking verdigris of sun burnt skin crackle across my face in an effort to smile the way a non-guilty man would smile. The effort was monumental. I was sure my death's head "nothing's wrong" grin would annihilate me on the spot, hurling security over turnstiles and through unseen corridors. This wasn't going to be like Stansted. This wasn't going to be like Stansted.

*****

A dozen days earlier the dim ogres at Passport Control and Immigration had locked me into an eight foot by seven foot holding room, taking my possessions with them into the Heart of the British Bureaucracy where the Tea was Always Served for the Good of Queen and Country, Pax Gloriana and to Bloody Hell with the Darkies (Stansted International Branch). Outside my blank white room a Chechen teenager slept under a foil blanket. Two kids from one of Africa's coasts - Ivory, Gold, it didn't matter, they were sufficiently and flagrantly black enough to make it moot - and a grouping of vaguely steppesish "refugees", as they were termed, argued outside with our bored handlers about the free sandwiches everyone had been given. The long bearded swarthy men in the corner ate theirs slowly and silently, eyeing everyone else with useless disdain and a deep, impenetrable terror at being caught with facial hair, brown skin and cloth on their brows in this baffling terminal, this baffling country. I was too busy for sandwiches, though: in my hands was a third generation copy of the standard Detainee Notice, warning me I was to be held for the time being until it could be ascertained what my General Purpose was in the UK. Neat little boxes were checked with neat little x's; the ones that weren't filled had descriptions with the words "deportation" and "seizure", but this was only a trivial detail pending rectification and prompt action.

I recalled the conversation that started everything...

"Passport please." Pause. "How long have you been in the European Union, sir?"

"Since June."

"And what have you been doing since June, sir?"

"Oh, traveling and stuff. Backpacking."

"And what countries have you visited?"

She leafed through my passport, her meaty fingers slick with a thin sheen of saliva and handling the pages like they were slices of gouda. I could see in the shake of her jowl and the beady, pathetic way she scrunched up her eyes and plucked at the confining elastic of her granny pants that she was aching with low level anonmity. Her job was menial and she was stuck in a body and a life that felt and looked all its forty plus years, and it was searing her from inside like a nicely rolled lamb shoulder roasting in her innards. Anyone who ever interacted with her knew it, and she knew they knew, and this was her avenue of revenge. This passport checkpoint was her pulpit, her hammer, and she was marinated in the juice of her own anger and displaced aggression. I smelled bacon rashers and rosemary and hate in her perfume. She was ready to pounce on the slightest provocation. Maybe candor and truth were called for in this situation.

"About eight or nine or so. The ones in there," I pointed to my passport to ensure we both knew how I felt about her intelligence, "and places like Spain and France and Switzerland. It's been a long couple of months."

"And you've just been traveling, sir? No working?"

Ice floes running down my clavicle, down my stomach, serpentine and angling towards my private areas. Truth or not?

"Well, yeah, I worked in Portugal for a while."

"How long is a while?"

"Two months. About two months. Look, is there a problem?"

"Yes. Do you have a work permit? Can I see your return ticket to America?"

"No and I don't have one. It's an E-ticket."

"So?"

"Well, it only prints out the first half of my itinerary."

"Sir, we can't be responsible for that. You need proof of an ability to return to your native country."

"But it's an E-ticket! It'd be stupid to print out that second ticket five months in advance."

"I've used E-tickets before, sir, and they print out. It'd be stupid otherwise." Nice emphasis. Now the hammering. "Sir, explain to me why you were working in Portugal without a permit...?"

How to tell her that all my papers other than my passport were in my bag, currently rotating on a carousel? How to explain I'd been robbed blind and forced to farm myself out in deepest Portugal? How to illustrate, using simple geometrical shapes and arrows, the dynamics of my E-ticket and the fact that it would not print out my return until my return? These weren't rhetorical questions: I actually proposed them to her. With a single thunderous shake of her chins and a dangerously productive stint of note taking - in red ink, with wrist fat shaking under the duress of her writing - I knew I was fucked.

This was it. They finally had me by the balls. For the past four and a half months I had moved through this continent with the unerring knowledge that distances would never boil down to zero, that there were places far enough away the only past you needed was the one you had just made up coming off the train, that rules could curve like time and not only would no one be the wiser, but no one would care so long as you bought the next round. Keep moving, don't look back. Little did I know that the part of America I actively hated, the part I would flee at a moment's notice (not in a coward's retreat, but weariness, and respect for the lost) had hopped the Atlantic and infected this diminished plot, this island of dirt, this small minded realm, this England. And I was an Anglophile.

For two or three hours I lurked in the detainment cell. I had left Greece behind with all its winds and white stone angled above blue ocean, and the transition was killing me. I raged a bit. I read Jonathan Lethem's Fortress of Solitude. I went outside to watch the (barely audible) television. I rocked silently back and forth, my ass tucked into the chair by force of legs desperately clutched to torso. I slept.

It took two cisterns of the thin gruel they served as free coffee to jolt me back to my senses. They may have had my belongings, my passport and documents, and they may have obtained knowledge of my having worked illegally while in the European Union, but damned if they had confiscated my sense of being as an American customer, the noblesse oblige of knowing you may not always be right but you can raise hell screaming for a decent cup of coffee and the nearest supervisor. So what if deportation was imminent? Their sphincters may be puckered tighter than a snare drum but they'd have to be chagrined once I demanded to be allowed to showcase the police report regarding why I worked, the email confirming my flight out of blighted London in little more than a fortnight, and the indignity of being forced to watch the Dr. Zoidberg mating episode of Futurama under the duress of moving walls of sound from the Former Soviet Socialist Republic's human fallout and two African teenagers intent on bartering their sandwiches for beer.

Large swaths of common sense klaxoned, but this was no time to heed disaster procedures. It took less than five minutes to make it clear my bag was full of alibis and positive evidence, no more than half an hour to get a supervisor on the case and a scant half dozen minutes searching my bag while alternating glowering righteousness and the insulting charm so common in American Consumerism Martyrdom.

Before I scooted to the bus stop I shot a Fuck You look to the guy who told me I couldn't sleep on the benches near Passport Control and, in case he hadn't noticed, told him out-loud he should "mind the arsehole who's been wonky with the passengers, his fiddleberries having a laugh telling 'em no sleepy sleep, cheers" but it garbled and came out as just "asshole". I think he might have gotten it, though.

I haven't thought of that Chechen kid in his foil blanket, or the stony eyed Muslims, or the two Africans, until now.

*****

It wasn't like Stansted. Turned out my passport wasn't zapped with a geodesic stamp bearing warnings of Hideously Dangerous to Conformity and National Security. It helped that this was Amsterdam and I could smell hash right outside the un-Vegas hermetically sealed doors.

But what the hell was I doing at a casino? By all rights I ought to be running screaming through the streets, or slumped sideways in front of a red curtained window. Hash and weed were cheap enough, no need to buy the other stuff, just wait long enough and offer your lighter enough times and you'll eventually get something even if it's just some cheap Scandinavian beer with a thunderbolt through the logo. A dimly remembered 36 hour peyote fade out was testament to that. It pulsed behind my retinas, throbbing and ugly, the color of a four day old bruise. My hands were still shaky, not even good enough to assemble a joint, but those could be purchased for the price of a beer at a bar, a night's haze for a few euros... and here I was sixty euro in, 3.50 for the cover, probably another fifty for the buyback and god knows how many precious chips worth of drinks. I had long ago fused the exchange rate into that part of my spleen cordoned off for Those Things Which Suck But Are Inarguable, but this was still a hundred or more euros. The bastards had confiscated my water bottle - Nalgene, so reliable, so cumbersome, so American, ready to supply desperately needed fluids or a jaw crushing blow to the head of some ignorant continental troglodyte - and I was already getting thirsty. Would the cocktails be watered down? Should I avoid a risky situation and just ask for JD straight up? What exactly was the etiquette at a casino, Vegas or otherwise, concerning shots? And would my two comped drinks count as four shots?

Don McLean's "American Pie" began playing, and I moaned into my sweat stiff second hand Wrangler flannel (purchased at London's Camden Locks for two quid and a tallboy of Boddington's, one hell of a long, strange trip for garishly orange Yanqui threads.) This song had haunted me across nine countries. It presaged disaster in every conceivable form. McLean's sweetly sentimental melody meant my doom. The sheer weight of the juxtaposition came crashing down on me, leaving cascade after crushing, ebullient avalanche to obliterate me, sending cruel needles through thick and useless fingers: earnest 70's yearning, uncomprehending baby-boomers and vacant youths alike in their mangling of already confusing lyrics, the yawning distance between Home and Here, Irony, Cynicism, Heartfelt Longing, the sad tufts of an American Dream in Darkest Europe. In the waning words I could hear the Oracle at Delphi telling the Athenians, "Flee! Only the wooden wall shall save you!" while all the while those magnificently corrupt priests laughed, knowing the Acropolis stood no chance against Xerxes the Terrible. They weren't oracles, they were just ahead of their time.

The song was right. It had been for months now: I was about to lose, and lose big. The last time I heard its whisper I fell down a cliff on an island in the Aegean sea. Before that it was preamble to the most incredible fleecing this side of the Louisiana Purchase, stranding me in the Algarve (Portuguese for "You and what army?"). But how would I lose? And why? And to these, these only-now-arriving business men in tired two piecers, these unshaven American undergrads with their NFL hoodies and breath rancid from too many cheap beers with their buddies from the U. of Colorado (Boulder), wooo! Go Buffs!(?) There was something deeply wrong here and it wasn't just my aching need for alcohol to soothe my grey matter. No, McLean was right: this was going to be an ugly night, a night full of Fear.

*****

Three hours earlier I was at the Kriterion, desperately contorted in hope and woefully uninformed.

I had come to Amsterdam's favored indy movie house searching for inspiration, transition, freedom and the right to watch people have real, un-simulated sex in the name of art. John Cameron Mitchell would deliver me via Shortbus, and then he would deliver a scintillating Q & A after tomorrow's final showing, and I would be there because I was taking care of shit now, that's how responsible I was. I had a savage need for interaction with the higher things in life and art house had always sated that need before. I saw no reason to think differently this time; the funk would be broken and I'd be released to do Real Things in my Golden Summer (Autumn) of Europe, the kind of things people wrote about in letters home and on their blogs and in fictional autobiographies. Nevermind that I hadn't written home the entire time I'd been out here, or that my blog had gone unnoticed for weeks at a time (the convenient whore for my writing that it was) or that fictional autobiographies are the worst thing man has ever brained himself with. This was to be deliverance No Matter What and if I had to watch people sucking and fucking to the tunes of the latest PBR drinking band then so be it.

Except when the art paper said "this Friday" it really meant "next Friday, y'know, the one you'll be in England for, enjoy London you sodding bastard." I could see how it would be confusing and forgave them their sleight, and, after purchasing a ticket anyway, asking the theater monkeys where a good, cheap place to eat was.

"The Kafe. It's next door. You can't miss her," one of them, Costello framed, grunted. The other one read his magazine disdainfully but tossed a chuckle at the directions.

I walked out. I was glad to be anywhere else beside's Bob Hostel, glad to be on a mission even if it was a failed one. I would never see the Q & A, but on the walk to the Kriterion I passed the Holland Casino. My feet had crossed the threshold, my mouth dried, watered, then asked for information, my brain curled around the new electrons. I couldn't believe my luck, my awful, terrible luck. A shift had occured, catalyzed by my visit to the casino and fermenting to a nice proof after the denial at the Kriterion's ticket booth: what the fuck was I doing looking for salvation at an art house theater when there was gambling, poker, Texas Hold 'Em to be found not five minutes from my mausoleum-like hostel? I chuckled at the goof, remembering that peripheral vision is key. At 20:00 I was going to be sitting down at a poker tournament in Amsterdam.

I had woken up at 10:30 earlier that day, prepared to desert Bob's Hostel for the Marnix, believing that changing from the sullen, American named fugue state to the intriguing and slightly cheaper Marnix would offer some improvement, if only because it had an "x" which was probably silent. This meant classier in my mind. 60 hours of steady menace, minor thievery and smoke drenched conversation had left me desperate for any place without Bob's implacable aura of degenerate ambivalence. Debauchery I could take, and gladly, but not this pathetic eternal trance. Two days plus change at Bob's had solidified my hatred for stonerdom: I would rather spend an entire week with stark raving alcoholics, Benzedrined up the gills and doing trucks off urinals, then one day with dazed barely-cephalopods whining about personal philosophies and pop culture.

Nearly five months in Europe had thrown me in with a rotating cadre of elite Irish drunks, whole divisions of them, all of whom swore undying friendship and mutual protection after the first round, all of whom had gotten me in more trouble than they had protected me from. I wished for their company now. Meaningless violence and beautiful, righteous idiocy was the order of the day. I wanted blood coursing through my temples, I wanted to smell that peculiar iron scent that precedes every fight, and I wanted to be extremely wrong and full speed erroneous. Bob's was the wrong place for that; here people compared notes about horticulture and crappy books no one would ever read, only cite.

In a fitting coda I departed Bob's as I had arrived: sneaking internet time and stealing Twix bars and giving every dread locked zombie in sight my best I've-got-a-switchblade stare.

Marnix turned out to be a soporific, but at least it was a neutral one. The place was run by a Mandarin speaking family of Asiatics whose marvelous interchangeability impressed even me. There was enough time to briefly ponder what paths the oldest son and I had taken: he was gap toothed, wisp of Fu Manchu to the full grown resplendence of my handle bar, gangly and awkward and time lapsed twin to my third grade classmates, 80% of whom were Asian and 40% of whom gave away the impossibilities of their family's dream with the first tonal indignity emerging from their mouths, me growing up on pulp fantasy and the Simpsons and big books on myth and an aberrant lust for words. Had his family headed West first or, like my own, was theirs a crazy jumble of Hawai'i, Southern California, Palo Alto and Monterey Park and West LA and Utah (Utah?!), only to extend it further, to New York (probably Jersey, too), across the cold Atlantic to Europe? I sensed some severing of fortune in his life, or at least a different kind of fortune which had allowed me here, a backpacking cliche but backpacking nonetheless through his demesne. In my mind the Chinese dream had always been associated with California, with oranges and dim sum in Spanish named cities. What kind of demented coin had been flipped to save me from the bitterness of my father's business failures? Why was I here, and he there, the two of us separated by more than the gulf of our embarrassment using the other's language? This was unanswerable, so I opted for the next best thing: quick and efficient check in, then straight out the door to the bar across the street.

It was going to be a long walk to the Kriterion and those deliciously dark Belgian beers weren't going to drink themselves. I was on a mission again: more life! Movement! Hops! Barley! Wine! Enough with the drugs already, this city needed a black eye and I was just the person to sucker punch it, nevermind my pathetic understanding of the categories of uppers and downers. Full speed ahead! Who needed knowledge in a town like this? Why contemplate Race and Fate when you have the ability to wipe out such questions with sheer brazen stupidity? Inside I felt the deep satisfaction of solipsism: were I he and he me, scuffed and piri-piri encrusted Pony's exchanged for nameless black dress shoes, I'd want him to forget about distance and luck and gratitude and just go out and get smashed. Maybe find a few Valkyries. No better way to thank the gods than a spontaneous fete: there was a wholesome symmetry to it. It was going to be a good day, a fine day.

If I had known about the Fear hours ahead in my future I might've stayed at the Marnix trying to bridge gaps and find my cultural heritage. But I didn't.

*****

The opening rounds were dangerously innocuous.

This was to be an eighty man Texas Hold 'Em Limit tourney, one buyback, no piss breaks til the final table, ninth gets his money back plus enough for a cocktail. I didn't know most of that; I had to grope for Dutch numerics through dim memories of German, trusting years of listening and speaking to the Huns to light my way, to tell me if the small blind was 20 or 30 and whether the guy next to me had come over the top with a raise. But I knew it was Texas Hold 'Em, and I knew it was Limit.

The pillaging Visigoth in me pulled at his beard in bereaved outrage. No Limit is to poker what Cap'n Crunch is to cereal: the undisputed king, just as likely to lay you low with a lacerated bloody mess of a mouth as it is to reward you with sweet golden (or red, or blue, or purple) chips. It is the Alpha and Omega. It is hours of paralyzing boredom fleshed with synapse burning seconds of panic so severe you are reduced to reciting mantras and inner chants learned from some unholy book or instructional video, all just to keep you from screaming out loud "I have the nuts motherfucker! I have the fucking n-- oh, shit, is that a spade? Oh my fucking Christ NO this is not happening..." and all the while every facial tic is noted, the turbo in the corner is holding his betting stack like its solidified disks of miasma, the dealer's cold seventeen corpse cold hands in a row, you've got to piss but no way are you giving up the button to the shithead to your left and did that motherfucker just CHECK RAISE?

I'm not sure about other poker players but every second spent at a table is, for me, a kaleidoscopic onion skinned microcosm. There is the greater frame of number of players left, but there are as many levels of reference as there are layers to Hell: chip balance, blind raise structure, constant and shifting calculations viz. how much I have left, how much everyone else has left, how many hands til my next blind, just how many hands can I actually afford to play anyway, are these other guys thinking like me or are they fresh meat?, am I actually the fresh meat here?, and above all the icy skein of too-thin-nerves known to every smack addict before that spoon starts bubbling, frozen lava burning its way through your body as you look at your cards and consider. The agony of constant deception leaves me no choice but to remain silent even though the back of my teeth and the guts of my throat want to hurl fire into the sky, a screed of pure flame arcing my Fear in letters forty feet high, telling everyone within the northern hemisphere I know the secret names of all the gods, I am master of their wills, I've got fishhooks and they've quaded up, one Johnny for every season and all of them mine, four-of-a-kind Jacks and no one the wiser and they're betting in front of me. But there's no talking unless it's a deliberate tell, a double-triple bluff. The only point in opening your mouth in poker is to lie.

And above everything, like some monstrous flag signalling Genghis' approach: all in. Even the worse player is capable of crippling you with the turn of a river. Nevermind that you know all the secrets names of all the gods, or of God Himself; this particular pantheon is uninterested. The poker gods owe allegiance to no one.

Luckily this was Limit. I was happy, despite the fearful demon inside me howling for the Ecstasy of the Big Push. After a long layoff it was nice to jump back in with the steady, hypnotizing flow of limit.

Except this was too nice. My chip stack was doubled. I had control of the table. I watched at least three people fold without having too, a guy who tried to shuffle chips but failed, attempts to bet below the minimum: rookie mistakes, oceanic salt smells of fresh fish and the only question where to put the innards... but was it this simple?

The question that haunted me at Stansted and at the casino gates remained: the fan and shit I knew about, but when would they collide? Any why was everyone staring at my hand?

*****

Ah. The ring.

After I left the Kriterion I headed to the nearby cafe/bistro recommended by Costello frames and his chuckling cohort. There may have been an immediate mutual disdain between us, a natural after effect of young and stupid, but there was also a clear understanding between one economy draining loser to another that cheap, good and soon to be happy hour'd are things you don't mess with. When I saw the menu I knew I had not been led astray.

My three day long binge had left me rail thin and dangerously underweight... at least in my mind. I calculated with a hobo savant's quick eye for prices and meat-to-currency ratios and ordered lamb chops, chips, calimari, a double espresso and as many euro Dommelsch beers as possible, then settled in for the wait until the tourney. A ravenous desire for meat had awoken in me, a desperate lust for stolen vitality and warm blood. H.S.T.'s Fear and Loathing had zoomed past me over the past few days, read in an increasingly hunched and desperate fashion and leaving only faint hints of formaldehyde and ether in its wake; it was nice to finally take up the book without the squat shadow of peyote or hash obscuring my vision. Cauterized flesh and seared words. I shifted around, took off my jacket and read.

A towering Dutch waitress passed. I concentrated hard on Dr. Gonzo. Frosty blonde Teutonic sex on two legs like pillars of ice. Raoul Duke moaning about his bestial Samoan aiming a .357 magnum at everyone. Jean Grey from the X-Men movies brought me my lamb chops, nodding her head in double lettered deference, telling me her name might not be Janssen but it might be Peeters, Bakker, Glaas. Something about lizards and mescaline.

Then I saw her: 5'11" if she was an inch, long supple arms brushed with light golden hair, full of ridiculous angles and illegal curves, unbelievable, unfair, firing desires with a metronome's regularity. Her seersucker blue pants might as well not be there for the amount of flesh left unrealized. I realized what Costello frames had meant when he said I couldn't miss her, and what Chuckles had been chuckling about.

I was glad for their corroboration. The naked hunger the other men favored her with was evidence for my own sanity. At one point I couldn't help asking myself if this was an aspect of my mind's stretched out desperation, if this was reality, or was this just another example in a long line of examples of my stogid and unyielding wish for the flaxen haired dream, for America in all her pink cheeked glory, light eyed and crisp enunciation better than any torch? Was I reading too much Portnoy's Complaint, too much Tropic of Cancer? One look at her and I knew the answer, but it didn't make me feel any better. Supermodels carried trays full of beer and deep fried sausages and cheese. Marble statues brushed with pale gold everywhere impatient to know if I needed another beer, incapable of knowing all I needed was another beer and an equalizer. What was it about this country with its freedoms and disdains and towering vertices of flesh everywhere? What was I doing here, all 5'10" and 200 lbs. of me, more fitting as a horseback spear thrower in the Golden Horde than sipping espresso in Western Europe, in this icy realm full of Valkyries and pale ice queens and Teutonic goddesses and geographic ambiguities? I silently thanked whatever bad fortune had detained me from Sweden and decided I needed to get to work on that Equalizer, the figuration of the remainder to this awful equation that left me looking up at blonde, blue eyed superiority.

Gonzo. Samoan, sweating Gonzo, 250 lbs. of Chicano Demogorgon Oscar Zeta Acosta, big, dangerous, unlikely, full of the Fear... he held a key. Actually, he held a .357. But it was a clue. I wouldn't need something as obvious as a gun, but I required a totem, a symbol of office as Man Out of Place and Proud of It. Amsterdam was closing in and I needed an Object of Power.

An hour and six beers later I was no closer to a solution until my eyes alighted on my emptied espresso and its attendant teaspoon. Flashback to Portugal, the Algarve, Lagos: the nine year old daughter of the restaurant's owner and head chef, my lunch break, joking around behind the bar, finding a teaspoon and bending it into a ring for her, the scoop covering one slim joint of her right ring finger, her demanding I create one for myself and so I do, this time the spoon head bending over the knuckle of my right ring finger, the two of us touching these warped utensils and making the internationally understood noise for super power activation... magic. Magic, a secret, symbols and signs, two people transformed through mundane means into something Other, all it needed was a couple of bent teaspoons and the will to Pretend, then Pretend to Believe, then actual Belief, if only for a moment.

I palmed the Instrument into a sleeve and left as soon as my change arrived. The walk back to the casino was half an hour at best: the perfect opportunity for spoon shaping. Turns out, though, that bending a spoon into a comfortable ring shape was harder than I remembered and walking afforded no fulcrum and therefore no results. At one point I found myself sitting on a stoop in an elegant neighborhood of brownstones (recalling that Brookyln was originally Dutch), furiously applying pressure to a utensil against the wall and cursing intermittently. Passersby eyed me suspiciously until I finally screamed at one of them, "I'm not a fucking heroin addict! I just need this spoon for a ring." It was already working: giant blonde haired strangers viewed me with a mixture of curiosity and Fear, ceding me the high ground and assuming I knew something they didn't. Which I did: super powers need symbols, costumes, capes, rings, and suddenly you're a person capable of winning an 80 person Texas Hold 'Em tournament in front of a thousand Valkyries and all their glacier blue eyes.
I felt ready for whatever was waiting for me at the casino. I had a ring on my hand, Fear at my back and thick foreign beer in my veins. It would take a monster to stop that combination, some seething, unholy thing straight out of Bosch or Lovecraft, and I doubted anything in this town would be scarier than the Circus Circus at 4 AM with a system full of toxins.

*****

Turns out, however, not even Green Lantern's ring could undo my own incompetence.
Two hours into the tourney I was at the same table, facing mostly the same people and holding onto a pathetic stack of chips whittled into their current form by the lathe of my own stupidity. For the most part I had played against everyone else fairly brilliantly. There were two decent card players who managed their stacks well and, by mutual and silent agreement, we avoided confrontations. Four players so translucently bad they might as well have not existed. One turbo so eager to raise his chips were shiny from spittle and one turtle so intent on presenting the right front he took agonizing minutes to decide if he'd call his small blind. I had no trouble with these: I avoided the competent duo, fed off a slow but steady trickle from the quad rubes, feasted on the turbo and ignored the turtle. It was the ninth player who killed me: me.

Queen eight suited, nine ten unsuited, ace six, jack seven, king nine, the Star Wars missile defense system, the Vietnam War, WMD, European greenhouse gas trading and Duke Nukem Forever: they all fall under the category of Never Should've Started. Unfortunately I was guilty of at least the first five of these, and maybe even one of the last five, too. The cardinal sin of poker is indecision; the second worst sin is a rash decision. I was profoundly guilty of the second, many times over. I played a dozen, two dozen hands all the way to the river and the show, and I played all of them beautifully. My death had been a slow one, though: idiotic pursuits of middle straights, chasing the almighty flush, clinging to the overrated ideal of unpredictability. The struggle to build my chip stack into one of the highest in the tournament was profound and laced with epic confrontations; the slow and steady decline was ignoble, and embarassing. I had been reduced to toying with the four chips I had left and pondering where I had gone wrong...

I clicked on publish by accident, so until I finish this some of you will be privy to my vasty editing techniques, i.e., spell check and cut and paste. Deal with it.

(Actually, I doubt this'll be done until at least Saturday afternoon. I have refused another night in this hostel and will spend tomorrow homeless until training to Utrecht, where I will soon be consciousless. That'll give me some time to get my story straight.)

I attempted to post about last weekend's bizarre run-in with ESPN the Almighty and (what are probably) Asian digital TV pirates. I'll spare all the sordid details, pausing only to cut and paste the following emails (the first is the most recent, because I'm too lazy to organize....)

Date:	Sat, 16 Sep 2006 20:22:26 -0700 (PDT)
From:	"Jonathan Tu" <jonathantu@yahoo.com>View Contact Details Add Mobile Alert
Subject:	I don´t know how else to say it... you guys suck
To:	"ESPN MS Support" <ms_support@espn.go.com>

Thanks for taking my $129 and shitting on it. Glad
someone has access to good toilet paper, because it
isn´t me over here in LAGOS, PORTUGAL.

I mean seriously, you couldn´t have GOOGLED the postal
code here and helped me out a bit?

Best,
Jonathan Tu

P.S. It´s John DaviD Booty, not John Davi. Even your
Gamecast thing sucked. Philistines.

Date:	Sat, 16 Sep 2006 17:50:52 -0700 (PDT)
From:	"Jonathan Tu" <jonathantu@yahoo.com>View Contact Details Add Mobile Alert
Subject:	Please for the love of all that is good and holy in this world, help me out
To:	"ESPN MS Support" <ms_support@espn.go.com>

Nebraska just kicked a field goal, our D is excellent,
our special teams suck and Im stuck here in Portugal
looking at numbers and statistics! I dropped $129 on
this package... the least you guys could do is respond
to me with one of your gazillion interns to say youre
shit out of luck.

Please. I need this.

--- ESPN MS Support <ms_support@espn.go.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Thank you for contacting us. I would need a postal
> code to validate your
> address. If you would send me that I could change
> your address. Thanks
> for visiting ESPN.com.
>
> Regards,
>
> Kyle
> ESPN.com
> http://espn.go.com/

Date:	Sat, 16 Sep 2006 11:32:39 -0700 (PDT)
From:	"Jonathan Tu" <jonathantu@yahoo.com>View Contact Details Add Mobile Alert
Subject:	Re: Account Modifications (KMM12217036V30334L0KM)
To:	"ESPN MS Support" <ms_support@espn.go.com>

Kyle,

Member name: ********
Pass: ******
Birthday: June 4, 1983
Address: Rua Dos Candido No. 86, Lagos, Portugal (I
don't know the postal code)

Thank you so much!

Jonathan Tu

--- ESPN MS Support <ms_support@espn.go.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Thank you for contacting us. I would have to change
> your address for
> you. If you would please send me your member name,
> birth date, and new
> address I could change this. Thanks for visiting
> ESPN.com.
>
> Regards,
>
> Kyle
> ESPN.com
> http://espn.go.com/
>
>
> Original Message Follows:
> -------------------------
>
>
> from = jonathantu@yahoo.com
> name = Jonathan Tu
> OS = navigator.appName
> _pragma = no-cache
> Version = navigator.appName
>
> subj = Account Modifications
> Browser = navigator.appName
> ISP = navigator.appName
> message = Member name ********
> Password ******
>
> I purchased a full GamePlan package for college
> football but Im living
> in Portugal right now... unfortunately my billing
> address is still in
> California. I had this same problem last year for
> the USC Arizona State
> game while I was in Japan, so I need someone to tell
> me what to do to
> get recognized as an international customer so I
> dont miss tonights USC
> Nebraska game.
>
> Please, from an American dying from lack of college
> football in Europe,
> help a fellow out! Im not sure how I can verify Im
> in Portugal right now
> since Im working under the table, but if you need me
> to send you a link
> to my plane ticket from LA to London and back with
> the dates I can.
>
> Thank you and Id appreciate a swift response.

In the likelihood of you having skipped over all of that, let me condense: ESPN's member services suck. Viidoo's TVU Player amends this by cannibalizing television broadcasts and digitizing for anyone willing to download their software and hope to high Hell they've picked the right ABC and the right regional broadcast to stream that night. Viidoo allowed me to watch the second half of the Nebraska game while the boys in Bristol thumbed my currency up their asses and counted off the latest South American countries they had recently consumed to sate their insatiable need for raw material and obscure sports; it also allowed me to view the 'Zona game in its glorious entirety, albeit without sound. I was rendered deaf by my situation and not by Viidoo: again, I am now living in the village of Oia, on Santorini Island, in the middle of the Aegean. In a bookstore.

My first day here on Santorini was easily the fullest day I've had on the road. The ferry from Athens pulled into port at about seven in the morning, disgorging us into a brutally barren harbor and directly into the chaos of bartering in a country in the shadow of Istanbul. I must've walked away from three different bus drivers with three different prices, trying to get to a place called Fira, from whence I'd move on to Oia, the site of Atlantis Books.

(Atlantis is distantly related to Shakespeare and Company in Paris, where I stayed for several weeks; the owners and many of the store's seasonal staff once slept upstairs in the fifth arrondisement . Beyond that tangential connection there is nothing of S&C here in Atlantis, specifically I am not in constant fear for my physical well being from the encroachment of spiders, mosquitoes, aphids, the ague, dysentery and that phenomenon particular to Paris in the summer known as "melt your face B.O.".

Actually, there is still a connection in terms of a pan-global staff with voracious reading habits and tendencies towards the bohemian in style and dress. Also, both locations are pickled from wine, beer and spirits.)

My arrival was heralded by rain, and lots of. The torrential downpour caught the staff at Atlantis Books by surprise when I arrived three hours later on the north coast of the island - but not nearly as much as my email from the previous night which, to paraphrase, said something like "Heard of you in Paris. Hope you have place for me. Am arriving tomorrow in the AM. No point in this email, really. Bye." They didn't have a place for me on that day thanks to my fortuitous arrival coinciding with a reading and book signing by Panos Karnezis, whose book Maze was shortlisted for the Whitbread Award.

So I checked into a hostel and traipsed off to the beach. Or I would've traipsed, if it weren't for the Homeric tint of my journey to The Furthest "Ten Minute Walk" Beach I Have Ever Sought in My Dawning Idiocy - but it was worth it, if only for the volcanic rocks everywhere and their usefulness in stone skipping.

I returned for the reading and had a good enough time, meeting the staff and enjoying the view from the terrace. My status as rain demi-god was clearly recognized as the staff invited me to stay for a private dinner with Panos and his companion after the reading, where I got nice and drunk off of wine and whiskey. Or maybe they just felt sorry for a guy who ends his emails with "No point in this email, really. Bye."

After that I headed off to a bar located on a bluff above the beach I visited earlier... in pitch black darkness alternating with the eerie glow of sheet lightning in the distance. The bar was recommended by both a girl I met while waiting in the rain inFira and a girl I met in Ithica/Beach of Infinitely Distorted Distances; while there I was visually pawed by the locals and just as they were set to throw me off the cliff I met a waitress fromVentura, who then introduced me to the staff of Atlantis Books because she thought I wanted to meet some English speakers. Amused by the tangled web, we all sat getting wet watching lightning twist into the ground across the sea for two hours, slowly getting drunk on Mythos beer and wondering if the sea moved only when spangled electricity illuminated it.

Since then it's been a steady routine of beach, gyros and all the reading I couldn't get done in Portugal for lack of material. In the five days since I've torn through six books and halfway through a massive collection of Kurt Vonnegut short stories, speeches and correspondence. I also watched USC beat 'Zona 20-3, but no audio because who wants to fiddle with the back of a foreign computer in search of audio ports that may or may not exist? Me, actually, but I didn't want to get blamed for anything so instead I watch ReyMaualuga destroy half of Western Civilization in his quest to get to the guy with the ball. I've been soothed by several things USC football:

• Erik McKinney's post game article, Move Those Chains. I've written to Erik a few times, and he's written back, and I'm incredibly sad we never managed to follow up on him guest writing here on my blog because he is literally the only sane voice in the wake of Leinart-Bush-White-Chow-McKay-Gloomy Gus leaving USC . He shares with me a reverence for cardinal and gold football, pop culture and a chaotic organizational skill known as Ironic Paragraph Headers. I'm glad he's back from Chicago or Minnesota or wherever the hell he's been, but mainly I'm glad I can read his stuff after every game.
• Though not really USC football, Peter Fiutak's spot on summation of what he'd do with/to Miami football is exactly what we were all thinking...

"I’d like to officially announce that I’m making a push for the soon-to-be-open University of Miami head coaching job. My qualifications? Well, like Bobby Brady, I can finger paint, but I’ll leave the actual coaching to my assistants. Bernie Kosar and Steve Walsh will be my co-offensive coordinators. Bennie Blades will coach the defensive backs, Michael Irvin will coach the receivers, and Warren Sapp and Ray Lewis will realize that NFL life just isn’t for them and will be my co-defensive coordinators. Lamar Thomas will be in charge of teaching the Hurricane players how to properly show how bravado is done Miami-style. I don’t care if there are 37 penalties a game; I’m restoring the order. Actually, I'm blowing up the order. My players will rip their helmets off after big plays, dance on the benches, celebrate like mad after touchdowns, and get back to being the Miami that dominated for so long after years of the button-down, corporate version. The team attire to road games will be army fatigues, like the ones worn at the dinner with Penn State before the 1987 Fiesta Bowl, and I’ll demand wacky jersey numbers like the old days when Kosar wore number 20 and Irvin wore 47. I’ll have no problem getting in the talent thanks to recruiting coordinator Luther Campbell and his armada of booty babes armed with hypnotic butts with cheeks that operate as their own independent prisoners of inertia. I will win at Miami. Oh yes, I will win."

CFN gets a lot of flack, and for good reason: the recent sellout to Scout.com, the idiotic semi-Eastern philosophic ramblings of Matt Zemek, the atavistic, slope browed HTML written in charcoal on the cave walls of outer Interspace.... They get some things right, though, and Fiutak is more often that not the guy responsible (note that he's also an adherent of the Ironic Paragraph Headers school). You also gotta love a group of guys who live and die by Thursday night MAC clashes.

• The fact that I am capable of reading EDSBS in Santorini, Greece and instantly recognizing a stock photo of Ole Miss head coach Ed Orgeron from his days as defensive line coach and recruiting coordinator at USC, and specifically from the 2004 Salute to Troy, when Orson and gang have cleverly bleached said photo of such evidence (excepting the palm tree) is of endless cheer to me so far away from college football. I will also note that while chatting with a guy from Massachusetts on a beach in Portugal, I shocked pretty much everyone in our company by asking him, upon hearing he lived in Plainville, if he attended King Philip Regional High School and if he went to school with former USC linebacker and current Seattle star Lofa Tatupu. He had, and everyone was thoroughly disgusted with my Rainman-like (dis)ability to instantly recall such screamingly obscure factoids. Yay, me.

I am now gearing up for existential despair because USC vs. WSU in Pullman is being carried by TBS, and Viidoo does not have TBS. Between now and Saturday night/Sunday morning I figure I'll have concocted same way of circumnavigating ESPN's cruel grasp... and if not, there are plenty of Hunter S. Thompson tomes around here to give me some ideas concerning revenge and Bristol, Conneticut.

I'll be here until probably the middle of October, then it's Crete and probably Amsterdam, then London, then home.

I've been working non-stop for the past month and a half: six days a week at Mullen's - one of the oldest restaurants in Lagos - and one day a week at a Japanese establishment behind the cinema here. They are, not coincidentally, a collective 35 yards away from my apartment which is also not coincidentally located 15 feet from one of the five bars in Lagos open past two in the morning. Thass a lotta math and it all equals up to Jon not having to walk very far when blitzed.
More importantly: college football has begun. USC 50, Arkansas 14; Beard 1, Jon 0. In concordance with last year's vow after USC's miraculous 4th and 9 audible at Notre Dame stadium - and oh, the heights, oh, the joy, oh!, the ecstacy to watch Jarrett race past Ambrose Wooden - I refuse to shave during a winning streak. Facial hair growth is now approaching nine days, and I expect to reach viking status by the middle of the Pac-10 slate. Why do I expect this? Because USC will shit stomp Nebraska at the Coliseum this weekend and I, the proud owner of a gleaming $129 ESPN GamePlan package, will gather the American-Lagos diaspora on Saturday afternoon to deep into Sunday morning to witness an epic Cardinal on Red asskicking amongst other foliage, namely the LSU-Auburn game, the Florida-Tennessee game and the Michigan-Notre Dame. Getting off "early" at 1:50 in the morning to sprint to the nearest hostel still open to use their high speed internet feed to watch a Flash and Windows Media Player enabled widget stream a feed from Fayetteville, Arkansas and scream senseless obscenities everytime Kyle Williams commits an illegal procedure penalty all while melting in orgasmic delight with every Steve Smith double route catch in the flat (you read that right: double route catch in the flat... fear Sarkiffian!) is very nearly one of the more interesting things I've done on Lagos on September 2-September 3, 2006 - and if you understood any of that, you are (1) in understanding of the fun I'm having here and (2) well versed in USC football and even understand that the proper combination of Lane Kiffin and Steve Sarkisian, the two headed offensive coordinator duo, is Sarkiffian and not, in fact, Sarkiffin.

Point being: college football has begun. Snakes on a motherfucking plane, terrorists, blah blah blah... it all ends now because of things like Texas-Ohio State and, yes, New Mexico-New Mexico State. Don't undervalue the Lobos, people. I'm not trying to suggest that snakes on a motherfucking plane should not engender concern, nor even am I suggesting that terrorism will cease due to the looming spector that is Notre Dame at the Los Angeles Coliseum... however, what cannot be avoided is the fact that college football is the healing balm this expatriated American needs for his red, white, blue and 3rd down conversion stat checking soul.

Nebraska fans who may be reading this, even after nearly a two month hiatus on college football material on this blog? Your secondary = Maginot Line. I suppose that posits USC as Nazi Germany, but that's what Godwin's Law is for.

(Sorry, still no hyperlinking in this day and age of only two valid hours in which to use the internet. It's still going to be all text all the time until November 6. Go google it yourselves you lazy, loyal jackasses.)

Point being: college football has begun. And Nebraska is going to get shit stomped. And I love the word stomp di-rectly following the word shit so much that I've used that combination twice in the last coulple hundred words. USC 41, Nebraska 16. Shit. Stomp.

Some other things of note: I watched Superman Returns about three weeks ago and I meant to write up a post about it. I was lolling about in a bit of a funk when I saw the movie. By the time I got out I was grinning like an idiot. I'm not going to say that the movie was superior in nature or in quality compared to the slew of fantastic comic book based movies that've come out in the recent half decade or so (I have too much love in my heart for Sin City, X-Men 2, Batman Begins and even The Specials), but I will say this: for someone stuck in a Portuguese speaking country there could not have been anything better than Superman Returns. God bless Bryan Singer (and god damn Micheal Bay if he manages to fuck up The Transformers). Brandon Routh had the perfect mixture of humility, goofiness and iconic, marble etched mythical proportion to pay homage to Christopher Reeve. Even the opening, with it's dated fonts and lasering text special effects, had me grinning as soon as that impossibly recognizable theme began to play and Marlon Brando-Jor-El's voice began rolling. Kevin Spacey was over the top and delightful, and even whassername the blonde was pretty good; even the fact that DC movies only work well when dealing with origin stories was less noticable than the simple pleasures of myth made celluloid by a cast, crew and especially director whose reverence for the source material literally drips off the screen. I came out of the theater smiling and oddly enough believing wholeheartedly in the possibility of the greatness of an American Empire which could produce stuff like this - or at least the idea of believing in that possibility. Pax Americana rang through my head alongside the Superman theme, and I think that can be "forgiven" considering what day it is.

I almost forgot, but luckily my watch has a date setting on it. Today's the fifth anniversary and I'm not feeling particularly reverent or quiet, and I know I should. I'm dwelling instead on my experiences here across the pond: so much of it has been positive, but there's been an undercurrent of anti-Americanism that I never would have believed possible in the wake of the towers and the planes both crashing. I've never apologized for being American, but sometimes it seems like some of the people I've met want me to. I've certainly heard things like, "You're the nicest American I've ever met" - statements like that make me pause every now and again and wonder, though not on anything particular.

It's easy being crass and dismissive and focusing on the negative (read: Dubya). Instead, I'd like to think that I'm here in Europe partly because America was and is the kind of place immigrants want to go to, which my family did. What I've done in life is inextricably bound up in that fact, and though sometimes I may be angry with it and sometimes even ashamed of it, I love being American. I also know that so many people have sacrificed or contributed, directly or no, to my being who I am and where I am. So today I think it's enough if I'm thankful to enjoy the financial and political freedom to wander Europe like a bum, but it's also humbling and shocking and simply sad to think that awful day is half a decade in the past. I started college a week later, and for me it'll always be inexorably bound up with my growing up and moving away from childhood.

I'll also think back to the feeling I had when I first saw Ground Zero on September 12 (or 13) of 2002. It was the closest I've ever felt to a truly religious feeling, a sense that large and terrible and unspeakable things loomed around me, defying sense and all attempts at comprehension. That yawning chasm surrounded by thousands of people quietly - and it was eerie how quiet thousands of people can be when moved to be so - peering through fencing and rubble, the gray sky, the scale of the tall buildings surrounding us and the hole in the ground before us... I'll think on that today.

Next week: Greece.

To break down the past week: I worked 60 hours, I've created three dishes that were and are being served with aplomb...

1. A chicken piri-piri salad. Piri-piri is a Portuguese speciality and can roughly be translated into hot sauce, though spicy barbecue wouldn't be too far off. I cut the house piri with ketchup, orange peel, fresh orange juice, a dash of vinegar, olive oil, roasted garlic, minced basil and coriander and diced up the resultant roasted chicken breasts with cucumber, tomato, onion, sweet corn, beans and bit of orange, then served it on a bed of lettuce.
2. A chicken vegetable soup that was more meal than it was soup. Chicken broth from two chickens was mixed with two glasses of red wine, two bottles of Carlsberg, tomato puree and water. I added in potato, tomato, onion, corn, peas, cabbage, carrots, bay leaves, oregano, cilantro and chunks of the chicken. When it was served it was topped with a handful of cooked rice and a dash of minced cilantro on top.
3. An avocado vinagrette with a base of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, rice wine vinegar, lemon juice, lemon peel, salt and pepper to taste, minced basil, pesto, white wine and some pine nuts. Cumcumbers, onions and tomatoes marinate in this, then are served on a bed of lettuce with a quarter to half an avocado on top.

I've also been doing a bit of actual cooking and managing as the head chef has allowed me to control the kitchen during the slower moments. In the next few days I think I'll be rolling out some more dishes, one of which will be my mom's recipe for dumplings but done in the Japanese style of gyoza.

I am now somewhat officially a resident of Lagos, and am acknowledged as much. When I head out at night I'll spend five euros at most, as I've now drank with, lived with, eaten food with or served every bartender in town. This is both good and bad, especially when you're (I'm) working eleven hour days. Today is my first day off since starting, and there's a huge beach party tonight from 9 PM to 6 AM, so the key is going to be somehow managing to list my vessel towards sobriety (or at least the atoll off the coast of sobriety) in time for work tomorrow at noon. For right now, though, I'm enjoying a day out of the kitchen.

I have now officially decided that the next time I travel I am going to make sure I stay in a place one week, minimum. My two favorite places in Europe so far have been Paris and Lagos, in both of which I was forcefully stranded and had little choice but to extend my stay. I did several cities in one day and it's simply not enough. So next summer I'm taking another five months off and doing Europe right, so that means you, Warsaw, and you, Rome, and you, Zagreb, and you Seville, and, yes, even you Kitzbuhel. You know I'm talking about you.

Incidentally my conversational Portuguese is still shit. I can count from 1 to 100 easily enough, and I can shout for three chicken piri-piri, swordfish and two medium rare sirloins easy enough but I still don't know how to say 'how are ya'. Between wild gesticulations and hobbled mixtures of French, Latin and kitchen Portuguese I get the point across, but there was one night I tried to order two vodka tonics and a whiskey sour and got back fried calamari.

Still, I communicate with the Portuguese better than I do with the Irish. There isn't a more unintelligble group of lovable miscreants in the world, bless their drunken bones, but the day I finally understand a conversation with an Irishman is the day I start believing the Bible is the unerring Voice and Word of God.

Then again, if one were to take the holistic approach and see every aspect of the creation as an aspect of the creator than the Bible really is the Voice and Word of God - but then so is Us Weekly, Seventeen, Hustler and Guitar Magazine. So there may be hope for the Irish yet.

Perhaps more importantly, I have sunblock again. And I managed to shave. Things, they be looking up.

(I am still working at an Irish pub, but that's been subsumed by this other, better, far more interesting job. Tonight I think I get to work the grill.)

It looks like I'll be staying in Lagos for the next six weeks to two months now. I'm currently writing this from the beach, at a music festival we are catering, and I had no idea there'd be internet access here and that it'd be free so I have nothing of import to say except to quote two wonderful men: Warren Zevon and Kurt Vonnegut.

So, enjoy every sandwich and poo-tee-weet.

So here's a bit of an update: I managed to make my way from Lagos to Lisbon thanks to sympathetic strangers. There was even a cabbie cool enough to not meter me and take me to the American Embassy. Seeing marines with guns is more relieving than one would believe, but nothing could compare to my first sight of an American flag not on fire or not being ridiculed on a shirt. It was huge, and illuminated from behind by a bright midafternoon sun so that its constituents - stripes, stars, a big box - seemed something they are normally not, which is ghostly, and rare. The American flag is a beautiful thing to an Americn on distant shores, and anyone who doesn't like jingoism or nationalism can go sit on a rusty rail spike.

As I was waiting for my new passport to be made (it takes an hour, apparently, though it's a temporary one) I got a call from the police in Lagos: they found a credit card and my passport in the garbage. So it was four hours of hitchhiking back down to Lagos where it would be too late to pick up my stuff. On the bright side, my payment of $97 to the Embassy for a new passport was reimbursed to the tune of eighty three euros in cash (sweet). It turns out they shouldn't have reimbursed me as the charge never went through (not so sweet), but we'll figure that out. However, I made my rounds to various bars and establishments to pick up ten euro for a night's work (sweet), apologize for showing up late for that night's shift at another bar where they were cool enough to dismiss it and offer up a congratulatory beer (sweet!), and then head over to the bar-restaurant to repay the ten euro the proprietor had loaned me. Once there I found out his freshly hired chef never showed up, so long story short I am going over there now to interview and train for what will hopefully be a month and a half of gainful employment (fucking sweet).

I also spent approximately eight hours contemplating what I'd do to the thief if I ever met him again. Two choices: all out vigilante justice, or bring him to the police and pay them enough, after all the paperwork is done, for some all out vigilante justice. One requires quick feet and making sure he doesn't have a weapon, the other patience and likely a couple of twenties.

After a while though I came to this conclusion: violence solves nothing. Ten minutes later I realized I was wrong: violence solves a lot. Ten minutes after that, I realized I'd never see him again anyway. I don't necessarily believe in any particular system or cosmology, having opted for the pussywillow course of agnosticism, but if I had to choose I'd say a karmic modus operandi is preferable. And even if that doesn't work out, how happy can this guy be? A life of lies and theft and subterfuge can't possibly trump being 23, in Europe and by the beach. If he doesn't get shived in an alley somewhere, he's going to end up being a lonely, miserable bastard. I'm not even sure if he's really French, so I apologize to all the lovely French whom I met in Paris, but I still get a valid visa for French hating for at least the next week or so. In the end, I'm going to have a happy life and this guy is a thief, a liar and, if karma doesn't work out, logic and the dictates of the human condition mean he'll have few friends to hoist a beer with. Me? I'm going out with two Austrian girls, a lovely Portuguese girl, a British bartenderess and a whole host of Aussies tonight because it's Tuesday. So karma or not, beat that you thieving fuck. Who needs violence when you've got better friends?

Having said that, I decided I'd break every finger in his right hand for symmetry sake.

Day 7 consisted of a long, slow, leisurely day spent primarily at the park, reading the increasingly impressive Little, Big by John Crowley. I thought about swimming the Rhine but thought better of it when I realized it smelled, again, much like Scranton smells in my imagination and the way Northern California sans the Bay Area smells every time I've been there. It was once again a fifty-fifty mixture of Germans who either assumed I was native and thus spoke German to me, or those who simply stared at the brown, probably Asian guy. I helped nothing by wandering with my shirt off in the sweltering heat, displaying for all to see a very large tattoo on my back; tattoos are international signs that say, hey, you, it doesn't matter if I'm from around here and you can toss as many glowering looks my way as you want: it's not going to change the fact that your daughters probably like me.

Afterwards I made an appetizer of garlic mushrooms sauteed in a dark brown beer on a bed of toast, with afternoon drinks consisting of freshly squeezed strawberry lemonades with vodka. My hosts loved me (at least I think so), and for the rest of you Europeans reading this - I'm looking your way, Holland, Sweden and Denmark - I am more than willing to trade a bed for some of my (actually not) patented culinary love.

We headed over to Bonn-Beuel's museum center where the municipality, in their wisdom, deemed it a good idea to give the local kids a space in which to get drunk and watch the game together. I don't know any actual numbers, but I'd estimate there were a good five thousand or so people jammed into the museum's plaza. The semifinal game whipped the Germans into a frenzy and, as many Germans have already pointed out to me, the resultant display of patriotism is/was a rare one. Three generations of Germans have lived and breathed since the end of World War II but the shadows are long; for my part, the black, yellow and red flags and the singing were a welcome reminder of my own, often bewilderingly jingoistic country. Patriotism and jingoism are often one and the same in certain people, but it was pretty damn cool seeing so many Deutschland flags, singing "Super-Deutschland" and chanting "Berlin, Berlin, wir fahren nach Berlin!" (translation: Berlin, Berlin, we're going to Berlin [site of the World Cup final] - USC fans, think of it kinda as a premature and hopeful "Rose-bowl, Heis-man, National Champs!"). Then the last two minutes of extra time happened, and what could've been a great party instead turned into a big fat woooosh of energy being let out. I could sympathize with the Germans: welcome to my January 4, 2006. If anyone is keeping score, I was in London when England lost to Portugal, Bonn when Germany lost to Italy and I'll soon be in France when Les Blues takes on the Italians. On the one hand I think it'd be immensely funny if the French were the victims of my wandering and itinerant curse, but on the other hand I just want a good party after a World Cup game for once.

The night ended with drinks, as usual.$

Day 8 sucked. Quite a bit, too. I got up early enough and left Sandra's flat in time to catch the train back to Cologne, and from there head to Basel in order to switch to Bern. The ride itself was non-descript, but there's something naggingly uncomfortable about sleeping on a train with multiple destinations. At times I couldn't even doze because of my fear of missing my connection and sleeping so long I ended up in Marseilles.

I eventually got to Bern, which is always nice when you actually make it to the place you're trying to get to. Getting from the Bern Bahnhof (train station) to my hostel, the Landhaus, was another matter entirely. I started off well enough by obtaining a map from the Bern tourist center and finding out what bus to take to get to my destination.

"Just go to the Paul Klee Zentrum. From there it is an easy walk to das Landhaus, ja?" my erstwhile but uninvested guide said.

Interjection: it's been powerfully, depressingly hot during my trip. I am by nature more of a heat generator than any other kind of endothermic or exothermic device you'd like to toss out there, and so carrying a forty pound backpack through summer conditions reduces me to puddlic extremes of moisture it's best not to describe. So when it started raining lightly in Bern I was ecstatic: finally, someone on my side!

Too bad the rain decided it was firmly against me, having discovered a number of angles foreign to any standard Cartesian plane known to mathematicians everywhere and using them all to destroy my pathetically insufficient umbrella, rendering me into watercolors, all of them grey and a bit of green. This on top of the fact that my guide gave me incorrect directions, thereby allowing me to walk approximately an hour through the old town and provinces of Bern with a forty pound backpack, a useless umbrella and shorts. I guess I didn't help the matter by signalling to the bus driver I wanted to get out a stop before the Paul Klee center, since in my enthusiasm I hadn't realized it was going to stop there anyway. This is all made moot by the fact that I am now at the Paul Klee museum and it is nowhere near last night's destination.

Long story short: wet, miserable and wet. I got to the Landhaus and checked in, and everything was fine from there. Great food consisting of a bratwurst mit rösti (sausage with essentially hash browns), with a reduction of red wine and pearl onions. Then France-Portugal, in which my newfound hero Zinedine Zidane scored the only goal to send Les Bleus to victory over the despicable Portuguese.

That's how messed up I was after the rainy trek: I cheered for the French, and I did so willingly and happily.

Day 9 has been interesting. I allowed myself to sleep in to about nine or so, then jogged through the old town, past the quays and shops, over several bridges and amidst those Swiss who were actually getting stuff done. This has been the best way to get to know whatever town I'm in so far. Unfortunately I had to pack everything in and head out as there weren't any rooms left at the Landhaus. I headed back to Bern's station, stored my stuff and did, in this order: Bernische Kunstmuseum, the market place, the bear pits and now the Paul Klee center. I have no idea why the Paul Klee center would have a bevy of internet capable machines, but they do and I'm quite glad.

Where to from here? Well, I don't actually have a bed tonight. I brought my sleeping bag, though, and there are plenty of fields and open areas around here. Unfortunately I think I left my compass and flashlight in the Kunstmuseum, so basically I'm not looking at a lot of good choices.

Tomorrow I head to Interlaken, Switzerland and what will hopefully be a meeting with Greg, my former roommate, and his girlfriend. Then it's the overnight train from Zurich to Paris.

Some background information, first. London was an absolute delight to this lifelong Anglophile. The tube is efficient, navigable and clean. In fact that could very well be applied to the entire city; I love New York, but London does not smell of urine. Some diehard Neyawkers will argue it's that genuinely pissy smell that makes the pizza dough and bagels so great but I made do without it in one of the world's greatest cities.

The mixture of the ancient and modern was heady. The names themselves were worth the flight: Piccadilly Circus, Elephant and Castle, Charing Cross, etc. Everywhere I went there was something to do and to see, a phenomenon not uncommon in the world's great cities but here magnified several times over by the charm, the style and the people itself. Though they were lacking in terms of giving directions to particular locales and streets, Londoners were a complete and utter delight. I found my conversations with them attractions in of themselves, verbal concourses that were always intriguing and always a pleasure. Though I quickly got over my natural instinct to assume a British accent denoted an impressive intellect, it was nonetheless impossible to not want to talk to everyone within sight.

Day 2 involved a four hour jaunt through the National Gallery, ninety minutes of which included an excellent guided tour of four paintings. The National Gallery's collections are stunning. It's far too easy to stand in one room for an hour, which, as far as dangers go, was about as close as I've come so far to peril on this trip. Of particular note was my meandering through the Impressionist wing while listening to Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. Though many assume Van Morrison put out his greatest album after marathon recording stints involving impressionistic improvisation with his session players, that's not entirely true - still, the music worked well with works like Monet's Bathers at La Grenouillere.

After the Gallery I made my way to my Home away from Home, the Holiest of the Holies, Pax Biblica: Cecil Court, thoroughfare of all that is good and right with the world, i.e., the best place in London to find printed matter. The books there were all out of my price range since they were all first editions, but that didn't stop me from wandering the nearly dozen bookstores there for an hour or three.

Day 3 began with Westminster Abbey. I enjoy a cathedral as much as the next person, which is to say that they're beautiful and awe inspiring and even uplifting, but I am not of an architectural bent. My architectural "knowledge" as it were extends merely to the horizon of understanding that a rotunda is not a pejorative for a fat person - but the Abbey went far beyond mere architecture. Firstly, Henry V - my favorite king of England, my favorite Shakespeare play and my favorite Henry in general. It seemed fitting that his tomb was the largest of all, and that it stood above the Coronation Chair upon which every monarch of the realm had been crowned since 1301. Even better: the Coronation Chair has been defaced and graffitied by a seemingly endless precession of choir boys throughout the centuries, which just goes to show that decorum is no match for impishness.

The memorial to Sir John Franklin, who died in the attempt to find the Northwest Passage, was also gifted with a dedication from Lord Alfred Tennyson (perhaps my favorite English poet): “NOT HERE: THE WHITE NORTH HAS THY BONES; AND THOU, HEROIC SAILOR-SOUL, ART PASSING ON THINE HAPPIER VOYAGE NOW TOWARD NO EARTHLY POLE”.

The Poet's Corner was next. The bust of William Blake was oddly terrifying and reminded me of Gollum: stringy hair, pitted eyes, emaciation and the faraway look of someone who has seen what few others have. I found it comforting to know that though he died a pauper, he is honored among the kings and queens of England. Some of the more beautiful epithets I found:

• "My subject is war, and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity." - The Great War's poets' memorial, 1914-1918
• "The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living." - T.S. Eliot
• "But there is that within me which shall tire torture and time and breathe when I expire." - Lord Byron
• "Time held me green and dying, though I sang in my chains like the sea." - Dylan Thomas
• And I had no small amount of pleasure noting that Shakespeare's memorial was marked with this passage: "The Cloud capt Tow’rs, The Gorgeous Palaces, The Solemn Temples, The Great Globe itself, Yea all which it Inherit, Shall Dissolve; And like the baseless Fabrick of a Vision Leave not a wreck behind." Midsummer's Night Dream still owns pretty much everything else in existence.

Next came lunch at Harrod's Green Man Pub, where I got my first taste of Strongbow cider, after which came Germany vs. Argentina and Italy vs. Ukraine at the Pride of Paddington. I am now officially invited to Berlin on account of several deliriously happy Germans, as well as Italy courtesy of some Italians. The pub crawl commenced from there, and I spent an excellent couple of hours with a group of twenty-somethings from Lester in the north, gabbing away about everything and anything. I invited them to spend a summer in Isla Vista, where I assured them there would be no shortage of "birds" willing to talk to them due to the accents and they did the same for me, instead inviting me to places like Cornwall, Lester, Newquay and Brighton. The walk back involved a pair of northern Irish newlywedded lasses who were both beautiful and kind enough to buy me way too many drinks at the only pub open in Paddington, since the three of us were confused by this English ability to close down all the bars at 11:30 PM. The night ended pleasantly: chatting with two Washington D.C. Department of Commerce ladies and arguing with a Briton over why America wasn't all that bad. I won the debate.

Day 4 called for a trip to Waterstone's, billed as Europe's biggest bookstore. It was pretty damn big. I picked up Little, Big by John Crowley and Equus by Peter Shaffer, the latter of which I'm almost done with and goddamn goddamn is it excellent. I spent about three hours perusing the graphic novel section and reading James Kolchaka's sad, hilarious, beautiful and comfortable daily journal, American Elf. I've never read anything quite like it and I would've bought it then and there had it not weighed close to four or five pounds. Reading my new purchases in St. James' Park was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon in a city abuzz from the upcoming match.

England vs. Portugal was a bust, though. I love sport in all its forms, but the shameful diving and theatricality from the Portuguese side made me cringe. I can't even imagine the frustration of the English. No, actually, I can, because they expressed themselves clearly via four letter words and gerunds thereof. I empathize completely: the poor sportsmanship of the Portuguese made me want to take up soccer if only to tackle one of them in a manner that would actually leave them writhing in pain instead of attempts at sympathy. They move the ball beautifully: why darken the game with that kind of play?

Day 5 involved taking the Eurostar through the Chunnel and on towards Brussels. I stored my backpack and took a couple of hours to explore the Grand-Place, eventually bypassing the delicious smells of mussels to find a pub that served ham sandwiches for 2.50 euro. Good thing, too, because I met a bartender named Aurelie, a Briton named Richard and a Belgian police officer who all insisted on buying me Rocheforts and Leffe Bruins until I was almost blind from joy, and also from beer. It was an interesting conversation involving French, Dutch and English all at once. That I managed to make it back in time to Central du Midi to catch the train to Cologne, Germany is a small miracle unto itself.

Unfortunately for me, it appears that Germany's train system isn't as efficient as I thought. As I was waiting for the train from Aachen to Cologne, I noticed that, hey, it's not here and it's ten minutes past. No big deal. Fifteen minutes. Thirty minutes. Now it's oh shit time. Luckily, my overnighter from Cologne to Zurich, Switzerland didn't leave for three hours, so I'm good to go: Aachen to Cologne takes an hour. An hour passes. I start talking to the girl next to me, whose English is impeccable and, I'm to later find out, whose Dutch, Spanish and French is also unapproachable, not to mention her German. We converse, and she's kind enough to help me figure out what's going on, which is that not only is the train late, but my watch is one hour off. I have now officially missed my train to Cologne.

Long story short: we end up talking for several hours as we both travel the incredibly inefficient byways of Deutschland and now I am here in her flat in Bonn, Germany, which is quite un-close to Zurich, Switzerland. Sandra is a member of a particular contingent of the youth of Europe who have mirrors all over the world: globally minded, unafraid of new places, willing to travel and friendly beyond all degrees of belief. Maybe it's just the erstwhile belief of the young that the world is a fixable place, but their enthusiasm is infectious. Also, they're more than happy to take in a wayward traveler.

This is exactly what I came to Europe to do: diverge, explore, get lost and meet new people.

Thus, Day 6 shall consist of expeditions to Bonn proper, plus gathering of ingredients from a local German grocery in my attempt to cook an American meal for my host, her friends and her flatmates. Then it's drinks.

There goes the itinerary.

Jetlag has yet to hit me, for several reasons: 1) it usually doesn't hit until days three to one hundred and thirty-two (which is exactly how long I'll be in Europe) 2) I purposely stayed awake the entire time from Los Angeles to Chicago and from Chicago to London, dosing myself with regular periapts of coffee and the caffiene I'm so unused to 3) I'm pretty excited.

I expect sleep to hit me like a ton of somnabulant bricks fairly soon, but that didn't stop me from walking through Kensington Gardens and Kensington Palace, as well as Hyde Park and checking out the Royal Albert Hall. Tomorrow's the National Gallery.

Posts from here on in will either be choppy monstrosities of unreadable Dan Brown-ishness (like this one), or elaborate pre-written on train sestinas using the words concierge, locker, chocolate and toilet paper. They may not necessarily be actually written on the day they were posted, but I will attempt to post every time I cross a border or start a ridiculous debate in Congress concerning immigration and how Congress only just now realized it's happening.

Anyway, today is London. I leave for Brussels on July 2. Cheerio, blunderthwicket fundleberries and all that.

[EDIT: one final thing: I cannot wait until Eastern Europe because the hostels out there are half the price of anything in the west. Also, y'know... it's Eastern Europe. There's a reason all the models are from there.

But the prices help.]

That impression began today with multiple errands. I won't bore you with the details, but I will note one thing of importance: my laptop died last night. I saw it coming a mile away: a destructive cycle of constant use, with 12 hour binges of computing at a time; the sallow faced blank grayness so common in notebooks teetering on the edge; slow boot up times; the motherboard fan failure, the ridiculous overheating, the petty theft in order to fund a terrible addiction to software upgrades. In retrospect I feel guilty I didn't do anything about the situation earlier, but I know I can't blame myself for it. That laptop had to lead its own life, and at least it went out the way I knew it would've: looking for porn.

To make a long story short, I am now the proud owner of a gleaming, slightly disturbing 13.3" Mac Book (2.0 gig of processing power, 512 MB, the Apple SuperDrive, etc.). Why is this disturbing?

1. I've been a lifelong PC user. As such, I've worshipped regularly at the altar of the BSOD - change is always scary, especially when you've gotten used to Windows. Even lepers eventually get used to their condition.
2. This thing is so nice I probably shouldn't have it. I know I'm going to spill a meatball sub on the argent white luminosity of my new laptop sooner rather than later, and the howling Mac hordes will devour me whole.

Anyway, the next few days are going to be hectic. The next few months doubly so, but in a different, hopefully better way. 

London Towne, heare I cometh! Thou knowft not the magnituede of the storme that sharl soon be unleash'd up-on thine coutenance. 

And on the eighth day, He created Newcastle Brown Ale. And it was good, with a nice nutty finish that goes especially well with red meat and tubers.

This is the beginning of what appears to be a full year of traveling. I depart for London Towne on June 27 and I do not return to these shores until November 6. Why November 6? That'll give me enough time to watch the back third of USC's schedule live, with a three game home stand featuring Oregon (11/11), California (11/18) and Notre Dame (11/25) and ending with USC heading to the Rose Bowl against UCLA on December 2 (and it's possible, as mentioned before, that we could see the return of the cardinal vs. baby blue jerseys this year). These last four games could very well decide the Pac-10 championship, the resultant BCS berth and maybe, just maybe, something more. I will also be on hand to throw clods of grass at every Notre Dame fan within distance during the week leading up to November 25. This is my vow.

Bwahahahahahahaha!

Is it bad that I'm talking more about beating the snot out of Charlie Weis and his Fighting Irish than the third of a year I will be spending in Europe? Oh well.

Beyond the distant horizon of Europe lies the teeming, vaguely brownish specter of ASIA. Nothing is specific but I plan on eating lobster, not knowing any of the local languages and generally trying to avoid the runs. Cathay Pacific's All Asia Pass begins every February so that's likely when I travel to ASIA to see all the ASIAN sights there are to see in ASIA.

(Name this continent: ASIA.) 

So, yeah, that's why there won't be any posts for a bit and, fairly soon, only at an extremely sedate and inconsistent rate. If there are posts in the next few days it's most likely because I'm an idiot and am on my laptop instead of, say, at the beach.

Pray that there aren't any posts for a while. 

I figured today would be an appropriate day to write about marijuana induced paranoia. When dealing with China, however, paranoia is the healthy and natural state of being even without any weed.

I've been planning an around the world globe trot since I left Isla Vista for good last August. For anyone who's done this, you know how it goes: initial plans ("I'm going to hit every continent excepting Antarctica!") meet actual circumstances ("I'm the poorest SOB in my zip code!") and everything gets pushed back. Logistics drag you down and all the little tasks you need to do seem insurmountably legion. One of those tasks is finding out which countries require visas and then getting those visas. Unsurprisingly, China requires a visa. You actually have to show up to the Los Angeles consulate in person with your actual passport, which they take from you in a byzantine series of exchanges only to return it to you after a randomized (but lengthy) delay. Naturally, I decided to head on over to the website to try to streamline this process as much as possible and guess what I saw as that day's top headline...

"Chinese Internet regulation in line with world norms"

Yeah. Not so much. But thanks anyway.

As a first generation Chinese-American (Taiwanese-American, according to my mom who also believes that gong-fu masters really did fly like in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) attempting to visit mainland China for the first time ever, this is, to say the least, a little disconcerting. I'm looking forward to the ancient wonders of Beijing, to the bustling megalopolis that is Shanghai, to whatever regional dim sum dishes I can find - but all the while I'll know, somewhere in the back of my head, that I have to actually watch what I say and what I write. And not in the "meeting your girlfriend's parents for the first time" way, though there is that element of imminent and extreme danger, but rather in a far more disquieting manner. Will I be able to update this blog the same way while in China? How am I going to feel about emailing? Will this post - this very post right here that you're reading - somehow, despite the monumental amount of whitenoise that is the internet, be found by Chinese authorities and used as reason to deny me entry into the country or, if I'm already in, something worse?

If it seems outlandish, it very well should. The cultural, socio-economic, political and religious revolution going on in China right now could very well turn out to be the story of the twenty-first century, just as the story of America's evolution was also the story of the twentieth century. China is the fastest growing market for many things and the internet is clearly among the leaders in that category: everyone from bloggers to Amazon to Google to World of Warcraft players is encountering the Chinese online, everywhere.

I tend to be an optimist in terms of believing that the sheer pressure of the cultural-economic factors at work will eventually move Chinese politics - and the censorship and reduction of freedom of speech rights that are involved - towards a more progressive, democratic sphere.

Until then, however, it seems I might very well have to think hard about what I say and what I type while visiting the culture and land my family came from.

The unfortunate thing is that I take to being told what to say the same way a duck takes to astrophysics.

While this may be a photo of a Chinese bulldozer running over Falun Gong tapes, I think it's an obvious metaphor for my experiences with the Los Angeles-Chinese consulate (the bulldozer) running over my innocence (Falun Gong tapes).

It turns out that I couldn't even get the length of the boat right, as it's not 45 ft. but, as mentioned above, two feet longer. That same kind of consistency applied to my expectations of the weekend: we were in fact part of the actual maiden voyage, as the boat was harbored in San Diego and not, as I thought, Marina del Rey. Furthermore the weekend consisted of something other than boating down to San Diego and back; we went from San Diego to Catalina to Marina del Rey. Lastly, one jacket and one long sleeved shirt were not nearly enough to ward off Saturday morning's troubling weather. I attribute all of this to me depending on Mark for email updates.

But the extreme awesomeness and unheard of amounts of cool-ality were spot on.

Pictures are as follows:

L to R: me, Mark (the captain extraordinaire) and Mark's dad, Joe (who cooks a mean breakfast in a listing boat)

L to R: Andrew S., Joe, Jon F. and me. Jon F. is somehow not napping.

Me and Andrew C. Note that we endorse designated auto pilot driving by drinking in front of the thirsty on-board navigation system and teasing it mercilessly with our delicious Coronas.

L to R: Jon F., Mark, Andrew C., me and Andrew S. in front of Avalon, Catalina. Our wikis are about to be whacked.

L to R: Mark, me, Andrew S., Andrew C., Jon F. Our wikis are now officially whacked. Those "girlie" drinks are actually made from pure alcohol with a mixture of baby seals' blood and ice attained from deep within the frozen heart of the polar south and not, as it appears, a mixture of rum, pineapple juice and glitter. And we're sticking with that story.

Me, with Andrew C. in the background. I'm not actually contemplating the sea, my inner being or even philosophical solipism as rendered by our inability to see past the horizon in any given direction. I'm pretty sure I'm just thinking about Cheez-its.

It was a fantastic weekend. Some highlights:

• Jon F. literally napping in every conceivable spot on the boat
• After every pass of a boat, discussing viability of boarding and pillaging
• Hamburger tartar
• Andrew C. daring the prow and getting soaked for his insolence
• Andrew C. later donning, in his words, "Storm Shadow"-esque protection due to sunburn
• The impressive stoner boat moored in Avalon, replete with a kerosene lamp, plenty of hammocks, too many Hawai'ian T-shirts to count and a "killer stash"
• Our waitress at Luau Larry's, who not only was on an incredible amount of what was probably speed but also sported ass less jeans
• The golf cart based economy of Catalina
• Sailing on a boat named Medium Pimpin' with a crew off four Gauchos and two honorary Gauchos

Marina del Rey was eventually laid siege to and capitulated with only minimal conflict. Victory achieved.

The truth is far more entertaining.

Today I and several friends of mine will convene at Marina del Rey's harbor to cast off on the maiden voyage of Medium Pimpin', a 45 ft. sail boat recently purchased by my buddy-in-drunkeness Mark. Technically this isn't the real maiden voyage, as Mark and friends had previously sailed Pimpin' from San Diego to Marina del Rey, it's new home. Also, it's previous owner probably had sea going orgies before he sold it to Mark. Technicalities are for wusses, though, so this is the real maiden voyage. We're probably going to smash a handle of Albertsons' brand vodka on her hull.

By the way, you did indeed read that correctly: Mark paid money to officially name and emblazon his boat Medium Pimpin'. Here's a shot of the she-beauty.

What's that you say? Can't see the name clearly enough?

We serve only salmon, caviar and malt fuckin' liquor on this boat.

We take off today and, if the forecasts hold true, the gloomy, wet weather of Los Angeles will eventually give way to sunshine off the coasts of San Diego county. Two nights and two days of poker, alcohol, poker, alcohol, poker and alcohol on a rocking boat is exactly what's going to happen to me. I may not know a thing about sailing but I know how to combine poker and alcohol in confined spaces to produce a refreshing, mojito like concoction.

Mix poker and alcohol. Shake. Add lime. Drink.

I need not explain how awesome this weekend will be. I will get sunburned. I most likely will be extremely dehydrated throughout the trip. The boat will eventually smell like ass. And it's going to be abso-fucking-lutely 100% non-shitty because I said so.

For all you landlocked lubbers out there, I have only one word for ya: suckers.

Those are indeed two pimps on the back of Mark's boat. Two medium pimps, to be precise.

Woudja boudja? Woudja boudja?! Yeah, exactly.

The categorization system here is, frankly, idiotic. Here's a (not so good) rundown of how the hamsters in my mind spin their way to the results.

Alcohol: And thus spake the Lord: "Let Us tape forties to Our hands." And He did. And it was good.

Backpacking through Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia: Because to not do so would be doupleplusungood. It's not like malaria is that crippling. This is theoretically supposed to be a repository for all my worldly experiences, including cities, regions, countries and dimensions visited.

Cancelled TV shows: A flexible rundown of my feelings for television's offerings. TV shows fall under several sub-categories: unjustly cancelled, justly cancelled, should be cancelled, should not be cancelled, should be brought back from cancellation, The Nanny.

College football: The greatest sport ever. The only thing more American would be draping yourself in the flag while fellating a third generation immigrant bald eagle who is now the CEO of Apples, Pies and Apple Pies, Inc.

Deglazing: It's all about the fatty bits, baby. Somnambulant gastronomics to the max! In other words, food.

Fake news: My attempts at Onion style humor. Emphasis on low quality.

General orgies: As opposed to Neil Gaiman/Chris Ware/Undead Walt Kelly orgies. Not as powerful as General Disarray but… who are we kidding? Infinitely more powerful than General Disarray. My friend's Micromachine Man breakdown of this topic: "Mmmmm oh yeah. Yeah. Does that feel good? Mmm. Oh yeah, you are so amazing. Can I…? Is that your…? Oh, yeah, like that? Right there? Oh. Oh. OH. Oh, I'm com– Oh. Whew. Was that good for you, too? Hey, I'm going to sleep. Can you make me a sandwich?" Probably simpler as "Boobies" but consider this a category all for sex, sexuality, sex topics, sex questions, hilarious sex advice (I'm looking at you, Dan Savage!) and kittens.

Gerrymandering: Frustration without representation is unacceptable. Politics in all its unholy glory.

Jigowattage: 1.21 jigowatts, actually. Science, scientificism, empiricism, quantum methodology, and nukyeler physics all go here.

Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor's love children: Like Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, I am destined for an extremely unhappy ending to my life due to my quirky sense of humor. Had Bruce and Pryor had a love child, however, he/she would've been immune to their sad fates as we all know two negatives always produce a positive. Also, the kid would've had the best Jew 'fro ever. Theoretically, this is where comedy goes. Theoretically, communism works.

Marijuana and nachos induced paranoia: Tinfoil hats optional. If you're a fucking lunatic, that is. The limiting of civil rights, the loss of privacy, the encroachment of Microsoft, Starbucks, Gawker Media, etc. Can be combined with Gerrymandering to produce a refreshing mojito.

Movies: Duh.

My +4 hammer of vorpal geekdom: Why not +5? Because it'd be nice if there was some semblance of balanced gameplay in my life. Anything involving dragons, operating systems, video games and the like. Intra-web concerns filed here, as well. Technically should just be replaced with a permanent link to Slashdot.

Neil Gaiman/Chris Ware/undead Walt Kelly orgies: Ahhhhh, the comic book. The underappreciated, malnourished baby brother of books and shit - but wait, they're actually quite good! Subversive? Check! Experimental? Check! Chock full of aardvark, San Franciscan Emperor, teen plague and heady goodness? Check! Well, maybe not the last one. Y'never know, though - the Simpsons comic covered quite a bit of ground. This category is definitely not foil embossed, though it is a commerative first issue that restarts continuity. Again.

Ogie Ogilthorpe and the Singing Shulzhoffers: Because we don't go in for that tippy-tappy, tic-tac-toe shit here. Unless it looks really cool. Then we'll post videos of it - but no one had better try a Michigan move. Also, anyone who fights with a cage on deserves a slow death via hooks to the ribs. In case you didn't understand any of that this is all about hockey.

Patagonian cattle herders: UCSB, Isla Vista and all things Gaucho. Should technically be filed under Alcohol.

Puppies: That's right, I said it. Puppies. Actually, this is just a catch all category (read: miscellaneous) that's designed to disarm and mollify. It can't actually work, can it? Can it? Woudja boudja? Huh? HUH? Who's the cutest category in the world? You're the cutest category in the world? Yes you are! Woudja boudja!

Rhythmic rhetorics: Speeches, poetry, radio journalism, Bueller, Bueller....

Tattoos: Barbed wire wrapped around a red heart emblazoned with Chinese characters? You need not apply.

The theat[e]r[e]: Who needs speed when you've got Mamet? Plays, playwrights, stages, productions, musicals, Broadway, off Broadway, off off Broadway, etc. Andrew Lloyd Webber will be shot on sight.

Voiced uvular fricatives: Not really our favorite favorite, but close enough. Glottal stops, contrary to the name, cannot be stopped and are set to take over the world. Language, linguistics, philology and grammar Nazism all go here. Come here. Should be slotted here. Please to categorize suchly in this general heuristic vicinity for whom please.

Voudon iPod zombie lords: White ear buds are the new headless chicken. Are your friends riding Loa to hellish unknowns? We find out - film at eleven. Also, this might be about music.

William Blake's rolling papers: Books and shit.

It's perfectly possible that this list will change in the future. Suggestions are welcome and will be ignored with great vigor.

He took my laptop, pass