What a Fun, Sexy Time for You!

'Til the Money Runs Out

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 02:00:00 +0100

Since moving to London, I’ve been a good little consumer. Turns out I spent most of my money on food and booze. Such is the life of a fat person/alcoholic/modern-day Falstaff. Here’s where the money has gone to:

Aladdin/Brick Lane Spice House: There are a lot of cheap little Indian (or Bangladeshi) food restaurants up and down Brick Lane. Stopping in there for lunch really breaks up the week. Garlic naan + samosas + vegetable curry + wine = foodgasm. Though if I’m walking down the street with one or more people I will get hassled by restaurant guys trying to offer us a meal deal. It’s like the crack dealers in Brixton, but with curry.

All Star Lanes: More Brick Lane love. All Star is a bowling alley-meets-American-style diner, rife with retro, Quentin Tarantino-esque trappings of Americana. Unlike an American diner, however, it is way overpriced. I had the vegetarian version of a full English breakfast and it was delicious. The brunch menu comes with ‘bottomless coffee’ except instead of the waitress pouring it for you from a jug like at IHOP, the guy at the counter had to roast each cup in an espresso machine. Oh, Europe, I’ll miss you.

St. John’s Bread and Wine: For my roommate’s 21st birthday, we went to this chill butcher-table restaurant for gourmands. I just had bread and wine and madeleines, but my more adventuresome foodie friends ate things like ox tongue, ox heart, foie gras, swaledale mutton, faggot & mash, and plaice. Ya know, offal just to represent.

Goddamn Jimmy, this some gourmet shit.

We also watched a party of 20 Chinese people eat an entire spit-roasted pig. The pig came out on a cart covered in goo with like an apple hanging out of its mouth, and the chef cut off the head and plopped it on a plate in front of the birthday girl.

Gordon’s Wine Bar: Lovely wine bar close to Embankment. I went there on a date, I might as well say. It’s literally a wine cellar, an underground cave with a low ceiling and close-together tables lit by candlelight, very romantical. It looks like this:

Note: the guy in the picture was not my date. (I wish!)

The Lexington: A bunch of us went to this bar in Angel/Islington that’s all red velvet curtains and chandeliers. I don’t have much to say about this place, as I don’t really remember it. One gripe regarding its architectural design: it was necessary to go down a flight of stairs in order to smoke. Consequently I fell down the stairs and slammed my knee into the floor and this French guy I was talking to at the time was all “Sacre bleu! Zut! Ça va?” The ensuing bruise was like a kaleidoscope. Also I kissed a girl. This is the most drunk I’ve been in London.

As an aside/reminder to my friends, someone should really just force me to go home if I do one or more of the following: a. repeat myself b. offer to pay for drinks c. run out into traffic d. fall down a flight of stairs e. get separated from the group f. talk to French guys.

Also in Angel, there is a retro theatre where one night I got to see Raiders of the Lost Ark on the big screen. Unfortunately I was under the influence of a pint of Guinness and two pints of Staropramen and promptly fell asleep. I dreamt that I was Marion Ravenwood and you were Harrison Ford and we were in the Well of Souls and it was filled with Guinness! Not really.

Southwark Tavern: For a classy St. Patrick’s Day celebration, I pregamed with a 3 litre bottle of Cobra, which I figured was roughly the UK equivalent of a 40 of King Cobra, but is, in fact, 2.5 times greater in volume and actually very watered down beer—as weak as American tea! So then we went to go hang out with Yuri’s best new British pal, Peter, down at The Southwark Tavern, a charming pub next to Borough Market. I drank Brooklyn Lager and progressed to whiskey. Yuri’s best gay pal’s friends included a ginger who was wearing a Canadian tuxedo and smoking Richmonds and a hipster dude with a porn ‘stache who works at a sex shop on Old Compton Road that’s disguised as a men’s haberdashery. Also Yuri was hit on by a man whom, I thought, in my drunken haze, resembled in visage and in cackle the leprechaun from the Leprechaun movies.

Speaking of Peter: Yuri met him in line for the bathroom at the Vauxhall Griffin—which we did not realize was a gay bar until we went there. He took a picture of us there:

Asians are my life? Also, check out the guy in the background with the moustache.

A few days later, Peter invited us to go to karaoke with him at Lucky Voice. Despite a strong inherent aversion to karaoke, I went. We drank Asahi—which I spiked with Waitrose generic brand vodka—and belted out some gems, such as “Karma Chameleon” and “Train in Vain” and “Valerie.” I met the inimitable Howard, an interior designer who had broken up with his boyfriend that very day. I, too, had been experiencing some heartache, so we sang The Smiths, obviously.

Also one night I ended up in Soho at a bar called The Admiral Duncan, where in 1999 a neo-Nazi planted a nail bomb that killed three people, including one pregnant woman, and injured dozens of others. I think the neo-Nazi sympathized with the Dutch. But seriously though…it was a terrible tragedy. Anyway I was there for a birthday party for someone I didn’t know, with someone I didn’t really know, and I was drunk when I went and didn’t stay for very long so it’s hardly worth mentioning at all, really.

Bea’s of Bloomsbury: Went to this cute little afternoon tea place near Chancery Lane for their annual Mad Hatter Tea Party. It was a fucking orgy of red velvet cupcakes, snickerdoodles, baguettes, scones with clotted cream and jam, square mango-coconut marshmallows, pound cake, and unlimited tea. I almost ate myself to death. All the staff dressed up as characters from Alice in Wonderland and it was adorably decorated and there was croquet, but I was too distracted by my insatiable apetite and downward spiral of self-loathing to really notice; I was more animal than human at that point. This will go down as one of the most memorable binge-eating experiences of my life.

The Orangery: In Kensington Gardens, next to Kensington Palace, there is a restaurant called The Orangery with white pillars and statues and big open windows framing the blue sky.

I had rose hip tea and a buffalo mozzarella, tomato, and walnut salad. I looked out the window at Kensington Palace, where Charles and Diana and Princes William and Harry used to live. It was beautiful. Then Livy and I walked through Hyde Park. It was sunny. It was spring time. Couples were making out everywhere—meanwhile, I was reeling from the previous night’s tea party and that morning’s punitive spin class. We walked home to Sorbonne House and the rose hips put me to sleep.

Now, to subsist off ramen for the summer. Good thing I romanticize the bohemian lifestyle.

This song describes my college experience, basically.

Sat, 09 Apr 2011 20:12:00 +0100

This song describes my college experience, basically.

It's a beautiful day in London

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 17:06:00 +0100

I never, ever want to go home, because I haven’t got one anymore.

I’ll never be I’ll never be I’ll never be...

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 02:58:00 +0100

I’ll never be I’ll never be I’ll never be I’ll never be young again.

Milano

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 17:53:00 +0100

I can already tell this 12 Steps gimmick is starting to wear thin. Here’s Part 2 anyway.

Step 5: Admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

Check, check, and check, assuming God and at least one other person reads my Tumblr.

Step 6: Be entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

Milan. This great cathedral overwhelms the shopping district, like a testament to the power of religion over a culture obsessed with material possessions.

Duomo di Milano

The two opposing forces of Catholicism and consumerism converge at little stands that sell postcards and magnets with pictures of the duomo on them.

At night it glows brilliantly white against the dark sky, like a TV.

Down on the street everyone’s all leather and lipstick and heels. The girls are Jane Birkin and the guys are James Dean. Aesthetically-pleasing details: Velma Dinkley glasses, bicycles with baskets, the checkerboard Prada heels, swaths of neon fabric, GQ motherfucker Versace suits, Guy Rover patterned button-ups, girls in knee socks, loafers without socks, porno staches.

Everyone looked like a model or a member of some rock band, like the pristine, well-bred children of the fucking wealthy.

In Milan we stayed with Militza’s childhood friend from Bulgaria, a fashion student named Beata. In Bulgaria, Beata said, if you wanted anything special, you had to make it yourself. Her designs all have something special or unique about them—a lavendar mac with intricate shoulder detail, a gray skirt with geometric patterns carved out in bright yellow thread. Her apartment is artful and lovely—sunny rooms with white walls, contrasting black shelves, orange vases, laundry hanging in the bathroom, a dress form in the corner, boxes of thread and scissors and sketch books.

She has a balcony with a view of the city, but she’s homesick.

Step 7: Humbly ask Him to remove our shortcomings.

Next to the Duomo Piazza, there’s a shopping mall full of Neoclassical architecture, with a glass roof. On the tile floor there’s this mosaic of a bull.

You’re supposed to put your heel on the bull’s testicles, spin around and make a wish. It’s impossible to do without falling over. I didn’t ask God to remove all of my faults, but I made a wish that would require the surmounting of some deep personal flaws. I can’t tell you what it was, obviously, or it won’t come true.

Anyway it’s humbling to make a wish. It’s humbling to fall over in front of a bunch of sweatpants-clad tourists outside of a baroque McDonald’s.

Steps 8 & 9: Make a list of all the persons we have harmed, and make amends to them all.

Sorry random French guy, I was so mean to you.

Poor Marco. He just wanted to party.

Sorry panhandler, I know you just wanted money for Africa. I didn’t give you any.

Sorry other panhandler, we weren’t laughing at you. We were just really high. If it makes you feel any better, we bought a few dozen of your roses. We didn’t get any passport photos taken, but I’ve never seen anyone with a passport photo that was taken outside in some alleyway, so you should probably stop offering that service anyway.

Sorry to everyone I bumped into with the bumper car at the gypsy carnival behind the Castello Sforzesco.

Sorry Milan Public Transit, for all those times I didn’t validate my ticket.

Sorry to all the baby squid I ate in that inky-black risotto. You tasted like a newspaper in food form.

Step 10: Continue to take a personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admit it.

Italy offers much in the way of vice and pleasure; just ask Berlusconi. The prime minister’s ongoing legal issues have included a litany of bribery, corruption, and mafia collusion charges, but we when we were there, he was on trial for allegedly having sex with an underage prostitute. We passed through anti-Berlusconi/Lega Nord demonstrations in public squares. On the red metro wall, white spray paint screamed, “Bunga Bunga + Cocaina/Berlusconi ti rapina.” This couplet refers to Berlusconi’s infamous Bunga Bunga parties, which took place in his villa near Milan. At these sexy sex parties, allegedly, Berlusconi would blow coke off big-titted teenagers and supply them with drugs and stuff. Italy: a country where the head of government behaves like Justin Timberlake’s character in the Facebook movie.

Anyhow, like Berlusconi, I am a hedonist. But instead of cocaine or orgies, Milan fed my appetite for amazing gelato and wine and coffee.

Gelato.

Mocha.

An unholy convergence of guilty pleasures occurred at aperitivo at a bar called Exploit. Aperitivo is essentially a buffet that you get for free with a drink, which is something of a wet dream of mine. I had white wine; 9 fucking Euro, baby, but I made the most of it by making like four trips to the buffet. Foccacia, cheesy bread squares, mini pizzas, fruit, salmon, fried potato balls, cheese balls—I was told this was a subpar aperitivo, but like, whatever. At Exploit we met up with Mili’s friend Vlado, who brought with him his Polish friend Jan and a Georgian guy I knew only as Prince Caspian. Prince Caspian was dressed in head-to-toe black, including a black turtleneck and jaunty black scarf. The Eastern Europeanness was, frankly, overwhelming.

So I was up at the bar making a necklace of fried potato balls with my skewer, when suddenly the bartender gifted me with a CD. It was the Exploit soundtrack! Nonetheless I pretended it was a mixtape he had prepared personally for me, imagining that he admired my dedication to starches, knowing that we would bond over our mutual love of alcohol and working in the food service industry.

Anyway, then Prince Caspian and Jan and Beata and I went to go smoke pot. We stood outside for a while by the park that stretches between the basilica San Lorenzo and the basilica Sant Eustorgio, where public hangings of condemned commoners used to take place.

Eastern Europeans may be immune to alcohol, but they get high like total squares. It made me really happy. P.C. just wouldn’t stop giggling. It was a real contrast to his existentialist wardrobe. We sat on the leather couch inside the bar for a while, drinking €9 cocktails and acting all stoned.

There was a glassless window that displayed chefs in white hats preparing food in the kitchen, and it glowed white against the darkness of the restaurant. Beata kept remarking that it looked like a TV, like the chefs were on TV.

We got lost getting back, then I curled up on Beata’s burnt-orange pullout couch, with her strawberry-patterned sheets, in her awesome little flat.

Step 11: Seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

The morning I left Milan, at a local place, under a larger-than-life, Renaissance-style painting of Jesus, I ate a breakfast of pizza, cannoli, and cappuccino, just to round out my moral inventory (and my ass). It was time to go home.

Docked on the runway in the EasyJet plane, I reviewed the notes I had taken throughout my journey. They were mostly vague (“tunnel,” “dome place”) and some were inexplicable “leather hat guy—giant beers”). I’ve tried to piece together these moments, to make a narrative out of the absurd. To make sense of things.

Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we try to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in our affairs.

It’s too late, I’m off the wagon. Fortunately for you, dear reader.

An Interesting Insight Into the Editorial Process

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 11:30:00 +0100

This might be really obnoxious and unprofessional, but no one reads my tumblr so it’s okay.

What I wrote:

What they published:

What I wrote:

What they published:

I guess I should get a better sense of the magazine’s audience.

Note: Kristal Glam Club does not actually have chandeliers made of lasers; such a thing does not exist, as far as I know.

This Week In Maura

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 13:17:00 +0100

Yes, I meant for the title to sound sexual.

Monday: It was a beautiful Spring day in South Kensington, so I decided to go for a walk before my four-hour Shakespeare seminar. I went down to Brompton Road, where all the chic boutiques are, past the old Michelin tire factory, with its pretty blue and white tile and stained glass and open windows bursting with flowers and plants. I sat at Cafe Milan across the street from the Tube station and enjoyed an almond croissant and coffee while reading Othello.

That night I went to Tiger Tiger. Why did I go back to this terrible, terrible place? It was crowded and awful. I drank liquor from a pineapple. I encountered an ethical dilemma when a guy in a fedora bought me a vodka soda; would accepting the drink be an implicit endorsement of the wearing of fedoras? Then I reasoned that there could be no harm in accepting free alcohol from a stranger at a bar. There’s no way that could ever be a bad idea.

Tuesday: I’m currently interning at a place on Brick Lane. This street is known for its Indian food, but it also has awesome vintage shopping, especially at pop-up stores on the weekends. I love digging through the racks of frocks and Burberry coats, the suitcases of necklaces and old copies of Vogue, and seeing all the crazy Brick Lane characters that look like homeless people, Pete Doherty, or Berlin ravers from the 90s.

Little food shacks pop up and disappear mysteriously. It’s crawling with anorexic hipsters.

These photos were taken by my co-worker Jazz using the vintage filter on her iPhone. “I guess that makes me a dickhead,” she said.

At lunch I got an egg and cheese bagel from my favorite bagel shop. It’s called “Beigel Shop,” and it promises “Hot Beigels All Night.” Poor London, though, they can’t get bagels right. They can’t even spell “bagel.” Are there even Jewish people in this city?

I had an Americano at Brick Lane Coffee, your typical hipster coffee place. The walls are covered in retro nudies, photos clipped from 80s-era Teen Beat of heartthrobs like Scott Baio and Ralph Macchio, and one giant Michael J. Fox wall calendar from 1983. Their loyalty card has on it the following picture from Teen Wolf:

I’ve already gotten enough holes punched to get a free coffee. I like to sit there and stare at the punks, the lumberjack hipsters, and the pierced and tatted-up barista guy with an incongruous Oliver Twist accent. They also always have copies of The Sun, so I can catch up on my yellow journalism and check out the tits on Page Three.

Wednesday: Another lunch mecca near work is Old Spitalfields Market. The glass-enclosed Victorian marketplace encompasses a grid of striped umbrella-covered stalls selling fashion, food, and vintage shit. It’s also full of pretty cool restaurants like Square Pie and The Luxe.

That day, I grabbed Thai fast food and then mint chocolate chip ice cream from Crepe Affaire. I ate it in front of the anorexic hipsters while they smoked and acted pissy.

Thursday: After work I went to The Breakfast Club in Angel. It’s a cafe covered in John Huges film posters, pictures of Madonna, and other American 80s iconography. You can pretty much get anything good here, coffee and pancakes or booze and burritos or whatever. With its Brat Pack imagery, comfort food menu, and £4-off bottles of wine at happy hour, this place really knows how to tug at my heartstrings.

Friday: I had the day off and the weather was gorgeous again, so I went to Portobello Market. It’s the market from that scene in Notting Hill where Hugh Grant is walking around all morose because of the erratic changes in weather. Honestly, I love that scene. And that movie. I am lame. So I walked around and looked at purses and dresses and shoes and fruit and books and stuff for forever. I bought coffee from the back of an orange Volkswagen. There’s no way that could ever be a bad idea.

Friday night I went to see Four Tet play a DJ set at Plastic People, a blackout basement dance club in Shoreditch. The supervisor at my internship got me on the guest list, so Connie and I were able to skip the enormous queue—suck it, hipsters! Also, it was amazing. Highlight of my week.

Saturday: Daytrip to Oxford. I was excited to see the place where my heroes Oscar Wilde and Bill Clinton were educated.

But first we stopped at Bourton-on-the-Water, a quintessentially English village where everything is funny. I ate Quorn sausages and we went to a model village in a beer garden, where there were these creepy coin-operated miniature models of gnomes and clowns. What the fuck? Bourton-on-the-Water is known as the Venice of the Cotswolds, which is like saying that Branson, Missouri is the Paris of Missouri. It is really pretty though:

Oxford was nice. Filled me with envy though. Also, they won the big boat race that day! Suck it, Cambridge! lrn2crew.

I miss halls of learning. My Shakespeare class takes place in what looks like a hotel room inside a converted flat on a residential street. Sometimes I feel like I might as well be getting a degree from Phoenix online.

Saturday night we went to Shoreditch to eat Vietnamese food at Hanoi Cafe. Then we went to the Big Chill Bar, over on Brick Lane. Is it somehow significant that I went to The Breakfast Club and The Big Chill in the same week? They’re basically the same movie right, except no one cares about The Big Chill because it’s about baby boomer thirtysomethings? Which, by the way, this is why the economy’s fucked, people: the boomers couldn’t prevent our current crisis because they were too distracted smoking pot and reminiscing about college and dancing to Motown the way only white people can.

I still love you, though, Jeff Goldblum.

I Have Been To Beautiful Places

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 12:52:00 +0000

On Wednesday, 16 February, I fell asleep in London and woke up in Barcelona. Sun-starved, dazed, stepping out onto the bright tarmac, I thought: this is what that guy from that book must have felt like when he came out of that cave. My friends and I took a bus from the airport, past the bullfighting stadium and the Arc de Triomf, past the fountains and Noucentista statues at Plaça de Catalunya. We checked into a hostel near La Rambla, a street filled with all the trappings of tourism—living statues and waffle vendors and souvenir vendors and pickpockets and those little rubber firefly things that people slingshot into the air.

This was our reprieve from the relentless cloud cover of London, so it was time to soak up some vitamin D. We took a tangerine-colored tram to Montjuïc. We walked through winding trails of flora, fauna, fountains, and sculptures in the jardins.

Jardins de Laribal, Montjuïc

The jardins emerge into a panoramic view of the city. Have you been to Barcelona? It looks like this:

Tucked away in the garden, in a courtyard of little blue tiles and orange trees, is a restaurant called La Font del Gat. There is an illustration of two curve-backed cats on the window. We sat inside, drank white wine, and ate Catalan cuisine. It was 11 o’clock in the morning.

The next day, my second day of wine-for-breakfast, I began to realize that I have a problem. I spent the rest of my Spring break indulging myself in Barcelona and Milan, and after returning to the sobering, gray world of London, I’ve decided that I am in need of a 12-step program. So I will go through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous—in the context of this blog only. Here goes.

Step 1: Admit that you are powerless over alcohol, and that your life has become unmanageable.

I will add that I am addicted to Europe, and that the lifestyle I indulge in while there is completely unmanageable and unsustainable.

My enablers were the following: my roommate Connie, who meticulously photographs with her DSLR everything she eats. She knows a lot about food and art, so she’s a good person to have around when you’re traveling, especially because she actually plans things out using guides and maps and whatnot. Militza, an absurdly patriotic Bulgarian temptress who loves the Hard Rock Café and says funny anachronistic non-sequiturs like, “If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit!” She is awesome.

Step 2: Believe in higher power.

Day 2: Sagrada Familia, the second-most famous church in the world.

Gaudí is buried in the crypt. He was killed by a tram.

The stained glass windows are like great eyes close up. They’re better enjoyed with an El Guincho soundtrack, rather than the hum of countless tourists and echoes and intermittent gasps of wonder and coughs.

The life-affirming sunshine of the previous day had dissolved into scattered showers, which gave the cathedral’s famous Nativity Façade the appearance of a dripping wet sandcastle:

It’s nice to know that you could never design or create something so magnificent. It really takes the pressure off anything you do. I wonder how many people even create something they’d actually want to be buried with.

Step 3: Make a decision to turn our will and our lives to the care of God as we understand Him.

Day 1: Fundació Joan Miró.

I’m not saying Miró is God or art is like God or anything like that. But the childlike quality of his paintings reminds me of a time when God took care of me and that was all the reassurance I needed. Also I needed a segway to my visit to the Miró Museum.

“The diamond smiles at twilight”

Miró is a Surrealist. He’s all about primary colors and shapes, women and birds; he created dream images as an escapist response to the carnage of the Spanish Civil War and the World Wars. The titles of his paintings are like verse poetry:

Morning Star

Memory of a Poem

The diamond’s angle lights us

The star of hope raises

Towards infinity

Catalan peasant in the moonlight

Young girl escaping

Step 4: Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

My inventory of immorality begins, naturally, in Barcelona. Wednesday’s vices were wine, sangria, copious amounts of bread, tapas, cake, and cigarettes. Thursday started with wine and tapas at Pintxo Bar in La Boqueria market. This was followed by the aforementioned moment of clarity, which was followed by chocolates. Thursday night we drank a pitcher of Sangria at a Flamenco show.

We then traveled to the Ciutat Vella district to hit up Icebarcelona. This area of the city is extremely posh. There is a marina glutted with boats and boulevards crowded with palms and a massive whale sculpture suspended among casinos and five star hotels.

Frank Gehry’s whale sculpture, Barceloneta

Along a strip of sand on the coast of the Mediterranean, some men were playing rugby in the sand by twilight. There is a cluster of expensive bars on the beach. Here is the ice bar.

As you can see, the ice bar was completely empty because we went around 11 o’clock. Nerds alert! So we had a private party with the icebear and the icebartender and the reindeer fur seat covers. We left, Connie smashed her ice glass on the boardwalk, and we walked along the strand and touched the freezing cold Mediterranean.

Now it was time to continue on to Arabou, party central for the trashy student crowd. We went to Chipito’s, where the pirate-looking bartender set the bar on fire.

We drank flaming shots through straws. Homesick, perhaps, I bought a pack of Lucky Strikes from the cigarette machine and we went to McDonald’s.

"Please—a little less love, and a little more common decency."

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 09:14:17 +0000

“Please—a little less love, and a little more common decency.”

- Kurt Vonnegut

Video

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 14:35:00 +0000

Cultural Adventures: Crazy Cock

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 19:38:00 +0000

sushiandwine:

Read More

I’m too lazy to finish my second Stockholm post right now, not to mention I have actual schoolwork to do, so for all two of you who read this, please check out this post by my friend Connie. It details our four-hour Balkan feast-a-thon at a Bulgarian restaurant with the sublime, ridiculous name Crazy Cock.

Stockholm

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 22:09:00 +0000

Part I

Djurgården—photo courtesy Dan

Stockholm, the most populous city in Scandinavia, consists of a cluster of islands off the southern coast of the massive wang that is Sweden. Like the people that live there, it is icy and beautiful and strange and hip. It is part medieval, part modern, and nautical-themed.

So, to begin our Nordic adventure, Ryanair dropped us in a frozen forest and we followed a trail of breadcrumbs into the city proper. This was after a landing so bouncy it felt like we were on Soul Plane (one hundred million points to fucking Gryffindor if you get this reference). To be fair, this flight cost me £3.

Anyway. Iced-over, winding canals cut through the city. We descended into the Tunnelbana, or metro, which is a labyrinth of underground caves covered in art (visual treats accomplished through some sort of pricey public works project). In Central Stockholm the metro cave is painted blue, so it feels like you’re inside a giant igloo.

Now, before we continue on our cultural exploration, let’s acquaint ourselves with some common Swedish words.

kök —food or kitchen. As in, “You guys, I am hungry for some kök!” or “Mmm, your kök smells like Indian food.”
väg —road. For example, “Is there a good place to eat out on Prince Eugens väg?”
slut —noun: end, conclusion; adjective: exhausted (note: pronounced like sloot)
fart —speed. Nastafart = “next speed” (a curious phrase often seen on highway signs)
snart —This word is not, in fact, a Liz Lemon-coined portmanteaux for when you sneeze and fart at the same time; rather, it is the Swedish adjective for “soon” (or “odd-come-shortly,” according to Google Translate).

Let us continue the narrative…snart!

We alighted at Fridhemsplan, home to our hostel. The hostel promotes itself as the most modern hostel in Stockholm, and was definitely the most baller hostel I’ve ever been to, what with its classy fish tank in the lobby, its comfortable-ass beds, and some nice views. Fridhemsplan is also home to a McDonalds that gets pretty rowdy at night, with long queues of model-looking people ordering Big Macs and puking on the sidewalk outside or whatever. On one wall there is a giant pseudo-arty poster of a male model in a leather jacket, blue jeans, and aviators, reclining on a car, as if to say, “eating McDonalds makes you hypermasculine and sexy and cool like a Marlboro man!” Also, In Sweden, even the McDonalds employees are hot, and you can get a McFlurry with pieces of a crunchy almond/chocolate bar called Daim. Culture.

As it turns out, Stockholm has really strict liquor laws that prevent liquor stores from operating after 3 p.m. We realized this, to our horror, at 5 p.m. on Saturday night. Luckily, Stockholm is 100% wholesome fun-for-the-whole-family! And our family fun started Saturday morning, with a visit to Gamla Stan (Old Town). Gamla Stan is Stockholm’s medieval center, with narrow, winding brick lanes and candy-colored old buildings. Most of the buildings are sunshine yellow and provide a happy contrast to the gray sky. Stortorget is a small, pretty square in the center of the island. In 1520, the square was the site of a massacre of civilians by Danish soldiers under the order of King Christian II. Almost 100 people were hanged or beheaded for being enemies of the unionist party, gnarly. Now the square is full of cute furniture stores and kitschy souvenir shops.

In those times, rivulets of piss used to stream down gutters that line the tiny alleyways. Now, you can piss on the street in giant metal urinals decorated with paintings of Christmas wreaths. Anyway, down one such narrow alleyway—in the courtyard of some apartment building, bizarrely—is the city’s most adorable landmark, Sweden’s tiniest statue:

“Iron Boy”—photo courtesy Livy

After rubbing the Iron Boy’s head for good luck, we continued on to a cobble stone square across the street from some museums and a phallic monument. We passed by a small church and a wedding party. There was an old Peugeot with the words “Just Married” on the back windshield (in English, for some reason). As we stood near the phallus, the bride and groom exited the church and were greeted by showers of flower petals and the elated shouting of the intimate wedding party.

Thanks Dan

One of the male members of our group went to pee in one of the Christmas-themed metal outhouses on the side of the road. Just then it started to snow. My friend Yuri— quoting Brad Neely—remarked, “the snow of Christmas morn falls like angels’ shit.”

I tried to catch a flake on my tongue. It was my second snow of the season.

A partial and totally biased review of some London places

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 20:41:00 +0000

We are young! We run green! Keep our teeth nice and clean! And we go out to pubs and clubs! Here is an assessment of some of the ones I’ve been to. (I apologize in advance for the tone and style of this post, but I’ve been reading a lot of women’s magazines lately.)

Tiger Tiger: Located in my least favorite section of the city, by Picadilly Circus, this flashy nightclub attracts what New York snobs would call “bridge and tunnel people,” i.e. people from outside the city who come into the city for a night out. Consequently I met someone from Manchester and sang in a horrible Kermit-y Morrissey voice, “Belligerent ghouls run Manchester schools.” (Despite my being a pretentious dickhead, he continued to feed me cigarettes.) My roommate Kaminie met some amiable chavs, one of whom helped her shotgun a beer by poking a hole in it with his car keys. I’m not eager to go back, but this place was wonderfully trashy, trashy fun. £3.85 for a glass of Vino Bianco, but you’ll need at least three to enjoy yourself, so pre-gaming is essential.

Waxy O’Connor’s: The name suggests a priest with the face of a melted candle, or a Catholic’s bald pubic region, but to me it represents the British appropriation and bastardization of Irishness. Located between Picadilly Circus and my other least favorite place in London, Leicester Square, this pseudo-Irish pub is packed with wall-to-wall people on a Saturday night. It looks cool, though: it’s 5 floors of brick interior and Hogwartsian architecture. There’s a fake tree growing in the middle of a giant staircase and stained-glass windows. But they play some of the worst music ever, 90’s one-hit wonders back-to-back with nümetal. If you’ve ever been packed like sardines into a Tube car at rush hour and thought, “the people here aren’t shouting or sweaty enough,” and/or you love “Mambo Number Five,” then this is your ideal pub.

The Roxy: A ridiculous nightclub full of hipsters, this place is wild and dirty. The DJ played a fun mix of current and retro pop—your Supremes, your B-52’s, a little Clash—that was good for dancin’ and funnin’ and felt like the soundtrack for a romantic comedy. People kept smashing glasses and spilling drinks everywhere, everyone was drunk as hell and dancing around in broken glass and sticking to the floor. There was barf all over the bathroom floor. There were a few creepo 40-year-old men who would shout moistly nonsensical things to me, which was weird. This is a good place to do shots of Jäger, bond with smokers and passing pedicab drivers, and just generally act like an asshole. £6 for a gin & tonic.

Club Egg: A warehouse club in an industrial wasteland part of town that looks like Delaware, a part of town my roommate accurately described as “bumfuck.” It would be a sweet rave club if there had been more people or we had been on drugs, but 4 of the 5 dancefloors were sparsely populated and we were mostly sober. The music was your typical mix of house music and trance. There was a cool outdoor smoking patio as well. £5 for a Redstripe. Free vodka drink, thanks BU!

The Gore: Awesome little bar tucked away in one of the stuffy, unassuming Victorian townhouses on Queen’s Gate. All mahogany, red fabrics, candlelight, and more luxe interior than a Cramps album (I hate myself for that one, I really do), this place is prime for seduction. There’s even a fireplace and a curtained-off boudoir in the back. One rich-looking blonde macked on her male suitor in the corner, her mink stole casually splayed across a leather ottoman made to look like the French flag. I love this place, especially the Rolling Stones soundtrack (apparently the band filmed a video here once). Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with Al Gore. £11.50 for a whiskey sour.

Notting Hill Arts Club: Notting Chill Arts Club! See what I did there? This place was probably designed for people like me, there are paintings of chicks with bangs and red lips on the brick walls. It’s free on Wednesday “Death 2 Disco” nights and the DJ plays indie pop, including all the important K bands—your Kooks, your Kaiser Chiefs, your Klaxons. Live bands also play, which is cool. It’s probably a similar crowd as the Roxy, including some creepos in leather jackets lurking in the corners, waiting to smack your asscheeks under your American Apparel skirt. But other than that it is highly enjoyable, A+, would drink again. £4 for a glass of red wine.

mac: that scene/song is all killa no filla thomac: gosling, so...

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 02:06:00 +0000

mac: that scene/song is all killa no filla tho
mac: gosling, so hot rite nao

It's what Darwin would have wanted

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 20:04:00 +0000

Today I went to the Natural History Museum. Most of its exhibitions consist of taxidermied animals in glass cases and dinosaur bones suspended on wires, but it also features a section called “Human Biology,” which can be more accurately described as a “meme factory.”

It has a lot of pictures that are meant to terrify children into learning:

The above photo is from a video titled “A Lesson in Martian,” in which this woman (????) speaks in a made-up martian language. It made me puke and cry at the same time.

Also, this is the creepiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen in my life:

This model illustrates the effects of acid on the model builder’s brain.

Children: if a man with a moustache and coke eyes wants to show you something under his coat, it is probably a logic problem.

Let’s take a closer look at that last one, shall we?

“Will you touch it?”

I don’t know what’s going on anymore. Get me out of here.

Childrens’ drawings that made no fucking sense, for some reason?

In this picture: a furry getting buff for his yiff.

In this picture: Robot for making the dogs run.

Video

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 01:21:00 +0000

Hold Tight London

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 01:08:00 +0000

This blogging stuff is hard. Normally when I word vomit onto a page I at least get mediocre grades in return; now I do it just for funsies.

My first week in London was rife with typical wine-mouthed college ridiculousness: sweaty club pictures on Facebook, too-wide smiles, public humiliation.

It all looked sort of like this:

Note my general pallor and flyaway hair, indicative of vitamin deficiency. Note my ruddy cheeks and sheen of sweat: I am shitfaced. My mouth is lipstick red and Grimace purple from the glasses of wine I drained. My eyes are wide with excitement and joie de vivre! For the first time I am Living! We are living big and broad, as Livy over my shoulder laughs and laughs.

It is only the redheaded girl in the background who pauses for a moment to frown at the Boschian triptych of debauchery unfolding before her. Her mouth tightens with existential dread. She knows what the others have numbed themselves into forgetting: it is absurd. All is absurd. The bright camera flashes and art nouveau wall sconces will be drowned by blackouts. I will fold myself into a cab and wake up on the floor, the sun streaming in. My window will scold me with a view of the Natural History Museum, beautiful and imposing, children queuing up outside to see big and ancient things, time marching on. And I will curl up in my bunkbed, my stomach heavy with bread and nutella, hugging a stuffed koala bear named Crumble. Like a child again.

Baby Britain feels the best.

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 20:02:00 +0000

Hello, Internet! This is my obligatory study abroad brag-blog. Here I will contribute to the horrific glut of information that grows like a cancer on the interwebs by detailing to you my fabulous adventures abroad!

As the inimitable Fergie Ferg once said, “London! London! London!” That is where I am. I arrived here on Sunday as a Virgin Atlantic plane sharted out a hundred university students ready for a semester of learning and book-reading and barfing out neon-colored spirits. I was jet-lagged and sleep-deprived and crusty. Since I’ve been here, I have reverted to elementary school-era cell phone technology, I blew a fuse with my hair dryer (with a dramatic pop and spark like a firecracker), I rode an old-timey boat down the Thames, straddled the Prime Meridian, and had intellectual conversations with Imperial College nerds. England: the funnest and sexiest of fun, sexy times.