FRIENDS I HAVEN'T MET YET
First and foremost, congrats to my Philly girls for coming in at a close second last week at Quizzo. Well, actually, let me congratulate Jill, who is probably the only one from the team who reads this. Walshie, my girl, please be sure to keep me updated on the team names, I find them quite humorous. I don't know why it is that last month we sucked holy balls, but I'm still planning on trying to make Quizzo on the 22nd for the Kennedy round. Remind Jerome, er, Johnny, that he promised there would be a Kennedy round. We shall prevail.
Now onto Buffalo.
Surprisingly, my schedule hasn't been too crazy. For many different reasons, I feel like I haven't been doing much. But I know this will change on Monday when we turn our focus to GOTV and I can actually be a part of the planning process. So until then, I've been told to relax a little. So I shall. In my jacuzzi. When I'm not trying to figure out how I can be useful to this campaign.
I know this will change. I noticed right away the first day that I got here that it was strangely quiet in the campaign office. I hoped it was because everyone was out, knocking on doors, at phone banks. And I'm beginning to wonder. Because all the balls are up in the air, no one seems to know what's happening where or when, and today, I sat at the front desk answering phones while waiting for my canvassers to show up. A handful did. The good news is that we're on fourth or fifth rounds of canvasses and lit drops, so I guess it's not as bad as I think it is. I've been observing and sitting for three days and the guy I'm working with assured me that this is what it was like for him when he got there the week before me. But he's dealing with a death in the family, so he told me that I should see what's happening tomorrow, but assured me that not much would be happening since the Bills are playing tomorrow and nothing happens in Buffalo when football is on. So it looks like I have another day of rest before we get together, piss and moan about lack of communication, come up with our last week plan, and start implementing. I expect to be very busy soon.
But the most interesting thing so far are the random people I've met.
For starters, I forgot that people in Upstate New York have an accent. In Syracuse, it's more nasal. We have really flat vowels. Instead of "I spent time with my ah-nt yesterday" the phrase sounds like, "I spent time with my A-nt yesterday." You get the idea. "I broke the vah-ze" becomes "I broke the vAA-se." And sometimes it borders on Canuck.
West of 'Cuse, folks talk with a weird mix of Canadian and Midwest. Soda is pop out here and I swear at times that I'm in the middle of a Minnesota Toronto, or a Minneonto, if you will. Or even a Torosota. But either way, it's amusing. I just hope I don't pick it up. Because we all know I have a tendency to pick up on accents. Very quickly. But for now, I'm just amused every time I talk to someone here.
I've encountered two very interesting people here that really stick out in my mind.
First, we have Dancing Man. I've seen Dancing Man every day since I've been here - four times in one day, even. I suspect that Dancing Man is homeless or in a shelter as he travels around in the same outfit wielding a plastic bag filled with something every day. I don't like to judge, but that's what I think. Judging by his clothes that are dirty and ragged in places and that his face seems to gather more dirt each time I see him, I have to assume such a theory.
But the thing about Dancing Man is - you guessed it - he's always dancing. Doing ballroom dancing moves and twirling and even some ballerina in him. Yesterday, I saw him do a West Side Story move as he crossed the street. He is completely oblivious to onlookers and seems content to dance to the music in his head. Which, for some odd reason, comforts me. I find him to be not amusing, but somewhat uplifting. No matter where he goes, he's dancing. And this makes me happy. And I know I'll see him everyday, near the campaign office, and run into him at some point. He's like "Where's Waldo" for me every day.
Then there's Antonio. Or Tony. I don't really know.
Last night, I realized at around 8pm that I hadn't eaten all day. I think part of it is the trying to save money thing. Because while I have a jacuzzi in my room, I have no kitchen, no refrigerator, and no microwave. So I have to eat out. I have nary a choice. My hotel is located in a pretty good spot in downtown Buffalo where there's a great coffee shop across the street and bars and eateries all around. So I wandered outside for a spell and wanted something healthy, but I'm around bars and dives and things like that. So I went to Jim's Steak Out, which claims to have the best steak hogie in Buffalo.
But in Buffalo, like in Rome, do what the Buffalonians do. Yes, they're called Buffalonians out here.
So I got wings. Because yes, they do make them damn good out here. And yes, they are different here than other places.
But as I rolled up to Jimmy's, there was another guy in the place. He was all over the place and very clearly, a good-looking gay man. And we all know that I collect gay men like they were baseball cards or even Pogs. Yeah, pulled that one out of my ass.
So he's talking to the girl behind the counter, apparently they all know him there. And he's saying weird things, they're saying he's pretty drunk. And the girl behind the counter goes out back and he takes notice of my presence, still halfway through his conversation with the now dissapeared girl when he suddenly turns to me and was like, "Go ahead, slap my ass."
So i did. Because why not?
And so he introduces himself to me with a curtsy and a kiss on my hand as Antonio. And I realize his eyes are really scary. Because he has these light-almost-white blue contacts in. For Halloween, I assume. I hope. And then we start talking, conversation all over the place, him just flaming all over and me somewhat happy to have made a friend.
While we're waiting for my order, he reaches down to tie his shoe and declares, "Oh, fashion faux pax! I'm wearing white socks with brown shoes." And the girl behind the counter (who has returned) says in response, "You're not doing your community any good if you're dressing like that, aren't you guys supposed to have a superpower fashion sense?" And he commiserates over his faux pas when some girls walk in - you know the type, tube tops, low rider jeans so the whole world's their gynocolygist, and shiny, sparkly bags that looked like they were bejeweled. And he turns to me and says under his breath, "Talk about fashion faux pas." Then he proceeds to talk really loudly in a valley girl voice and we're laughing.
Meanwhile, he's still making me slap his ass. And then he returns the favor. All in good fun.
And the girl behind the counter is like, "You know him?" And I laugh and shake my head no and explain we just met. Then he comes up behind me and slaps my ass and turns around so I can do the same and she's like, "Oh, you know him?"
I was like, "We just had this conversation."
So after much more ass grabbing between the two of us, we go outside while we wait and he tells me more about him. And he keeps telling me I'm just adorable when his friends call and ask him where he is. He tells them he'll meet them down the street in a minute and explains that he met this cutie pie gorgeous girl and then hangs up and decides he's going to hang out with me a little longer. We chat, it's nice. Get to know each other a little bit. Then he takes me back into Jimmy's, I'm getting my food, he gives me a hug and a kiss and then leaves.
I expect I'll run into Tony again, but it was a strange, but nice little point of contact in what would otherwise be a no-contact day. It's strange to be on a campaign, sitting on my ass, feeling like I have nothing to do, sitting in a hotel room by myself - so I felt somewhat happy I ventured out. I don't know why, but it was funny and happy at the same time.
Who says you can't have fun in Buffalo? Even for a moment. At least it was something. If I find time, I'm going to stalk the Righteous Babe headquarters and see if I can get some good stuff before I leave. Hell, I'm in Buffalo. And I really want to check out the Frank Lloyd Wright houses at some point. Watch. I'll get really busy and I won't get a chance. Won't that just be a bitch?
Off to bed to enjoy the extra hour of sleep. Hope you're all doing well, faithful readers.
10.28.2005
HOOKED UP IN BUFFAFALO!!!
Okay. So I shuffled off to Buffalo yesterday and I have been running around this city like it was going out of style.
But I got hooked up here. HOOKED UP!
So Brian and I get to the Avis Rent-A-Car where the woman asks me if I'd like the convertible for my luxury car. I kind of do a double take. I squint back at her. I'm conflicted. I've been asked for the first time if I'd like the convertible. And I have to turn it down. Because no one in their right mind would chose the convertible in Buffalo in October-soon-to-be-November.
Of course it's going to be 60 degrees on Sunday. Neat.
So I'm like, "Great, I got the Malibu or the Pontiac."
Mad Dog still has it good with the 'Stang, but mama got a Pontiac Cruiser.
Yes. It's a strange as hell car. But considering my other rentals - the Grand AM, the Focus, the Impala, the random GM car that I can't ever remember the name of - I think it's an interesting choice. Hell, I could have had the convertible. Damnhellass.
But that's not all. So I had to change hotels - nothing big, just they couldn't get me at the one downtown, so I was at the Hampton at the airport. It was nice enough. The Hampton at the airport in Albany is suhweet.
But the Hampton Downtown Buffalo is AWESOME. I'm worried I'm not going to get a suite. I think I'm getting a single or worse, a double (two twin beds - what the hell am I going to do with that?).
Nah. I got the King Sized single with JACUZZI.
Mama's living large!
Of course, I'm at the office and meetings and running around all the time, so who can enjoy it?
It might have been 2:30 in the morning. I don't care if my neighbor is asleep. Mama got in the jacuzzi. It is niiice. I have a feeling I'm spending time in that thing for the next 13 days.
The campaign is interesting. I dunno what to think yet except that I'll be busy getting canvass stuff ready all day tomorrow for Saturday.
Oh, and one more thing. I'm an Ani DiFranco fan, right? Been listening to her for over 10 years, right?
The church she and Scott saved (as documented in "Render") is a block down the street from me. I could spit on the future of Righteous Babe Records - they're conserving and rebuilding the church into a concert and art center where RBR's office will be.
Dood.
I'm finding Buffalo to be exactly like the Ani song, "Subdivision", and I'm finding that I also love a lot of the cute little businesses around here. I heart the coffee shop across the street from the Starbucks where there are more folks in the coffee shop than in Starbucks (success!) and the row of restaurants and pubs around here. Me like. I have a feeling I'm stopping into that coffee shop every morning before heading into the office.
Oy. It's late. And I need to get up in a few hours. So hope you're all doing well.
And to my Philly Phabulous Girls: I really missed all of you Tuesday night - it felt so strange to be so far away. Hope you're kicking some Sofa Kingdom ass! Or at least someone's ass! And remember, when in doubt, Martina Navratilova.
Okay. So I shuffled off to Buffalo yesterday and I have been running around this city like it was going out of style.
But I got hooked up here. HOOKED UP!
So Brian and I get to the Avis Rent-A-Car where the woman asks me if I'd like the convertible for my luxury car. I kind of do a double take. I squint back at her. I'm conflicted. I've been asked for the first time if I'd like the convertible. And I have to turn it down. Because no one in their right mind would chose the convertible in Buffalo in October-soon-to-be-November.
Of course it's going to be 60 degrees on Sunday. Neat.
So I'm like, "Great, I got the Malibu or the Pontiac."
Mad Dog still has it good with the 'Stang, but mama got a Pontiac Cruiser.
Yes. It's a strange as hell car. But considering my other rentals - the Grand AM, the Focus, the Impala, the random GM car that I can't ever remember the name of - I think it's an interesting choice. Hell, I could have had the convertible. Damnhellass.
But that's not all. So I had to change hotels - nothing big, just they couldn't get me at the one downtown, so I was at the Hampton at the airport. It was nice enough. The Hampton at the airport in Albany is suhweet.
But the Hampton Downtown Buffalo is AWESOME. I'm worried I'm not going to get a suite. I think I'm getting a single or worse, a double (two twin beds - what the hell am I going to do with that?).
Nah. I got the King Sized single with JACUZZI.
Mama's living large!
Of course, I'm at the office and meetings and running around all the time, so who can enjoy it?
It might have been 2:30 in the morning. I don't care if my neighbor is asleep. Mama got in the jacuzzi. It is niiice. I have a feeling I'm spending time in that thing for the next 13 days.
The campaign is interesting. I dunno what to think yet except that I'll be busy getting canvass stuff ready all day tomorrow for Saturday.
Oh, and one more thing. I'm an Ani DiFranco fan, right? Been listening to her for over 10 years, right?
The church she and Scott saved (as documented in "Render") is a block down the street from me. I could spit on the future of Righteous Babe Records - they're conserving and rebuilding the church into a concert and art center where RBR's office will be.
Dood.
I'm finding Buffalo to be exactly like the Ani song, "Subdivision", and I'm finding that I also love a lot of the cute little businesses around here. I heart the coffee shop across the street from the Starbucks where there are more folks in the coffee shop than in Starbucks (success!) and the row of restaurants and pubs around here. Me like. I have a feeling I'm stopping into that coffee shop every morning before heading into the office.
Oy. It's late. And I need to get up in a few hours. So hope you're all doing well.
And to my Philly Phabulous Girls: I really missed all of you Tuesday night - it felt so strange to be so far away. Hope you're kicking some Sofa Kingdom ass! Or at least someone's ass! And remember, when in doubt, Martina Navratilova.
10.25.2005
BACK IN UPSTATE NEW YORK, HAVE SOME CRAPPY WEATHER
So after running around A LOT in the past few days, I got on a plane this morning at 7:#0 to fly an hour and a half to Albany from Philly. Not too bad, unless you counter the fact that I got less than four hours sleep and I don't think I've had more than 5 or 6 hours sleep in the past SIX WEEKS.
So the weather all along the East Coast blows ass right now and I love hearing the pilot tell us he's going to land when I can't see a damn thing out the window. But I'm here, in one piece.
This hotel is SWEET. It's hooked up. And I'm only here one day.
So a day of "orientation" in Albany, which consisted of reading, meeting folks, and cleaning up the office - which, Boom-Boom, if you are reading this, I will be sending you a package in DC very soon.
I was hoping to maybe get a look around at some apartments tonight, but this weather has made me want to do nothing more than crawl into bed, read a craptastic magazine, watch some bad tv, and pass out for nine hours or more. So without further ado, I shall go to it.
I'll be sure to keep all of you updated since I'm leaving tomorrow morning to Shuffle off to Buffalo. Fun stories to come, I'm sure.
Whee!
So after running around A LOT in the past few days, I got on a plane this morning at 7:#0 to fly an hour and a half to Albany from Philly. Not too bad, unless you counter the fact that I got less than four hours sleep and I don't think I've had more than 5 or 6 hours sleep in the past SIX WEEKS.
So the weather all along the East Coast blows ass right now and I love hearing the pilot tell us he's going to land when I can't see a damn thing out the window. But I'm here, in one piece.
This hotel is SWEET. It's hooked up. And I'm only here one day.
So a day of "orientation" in Albany, which consisted of reading, meeting folks, and cleaning up the office - which, Boom-Boom, if you are reading this, I will be sending you a package in DC very soon.
I was hoping to maybe get a look around at some apartments tonight, but this weather has made me want to do nothing more than crawl into bed, read a craptastic magazine, watch some bad tv, and pass out for nine hours or more. So without further ado, I shall go to it.
I'll be sure to keep all of you updated since I'm leaving tomorrow morning to Shuffle off to Buffalo. Fun stories to come, I'm sure.
Whee!
10.21.2005
THE MOST ANNOYING QUIZZO EVER
This story goes out to my Philly Chicas.
I'm all about making new friends. One time, a lady on a plane asked if we knew each other because I looked very familiar. When I replied no, she answered, "Well, that's okay. I have friends I haven't met yet." Nice sentiment.
I'm saying this because last night, we decided to schedule a Quizzo night since I'm leaving for Albany on Tuesday (got the confirmation).
So by the time Jill and I got there after viewing Elizabethtown - much better than the critics have said it is - we found Megan and Christine at a table with two people we didn't know. Turns out there was no other available table and instead of leaving after dinner, these folks decided to stay and wanted to play Quizzo on our team. Okay.
So after yet another "_insert celebrity/sports figure/random person name_ is best friends with my second cousin!" team name, we settled in for a game of Thursday night Quizzo, hoping to better our below average placements as of late.
Let me stop here to explain the team names. We used to be "Honk if you Heart Butt-Sex," a name not so much vulgar as funny because it's related to a very funny story. But we weren't doing so good with the name. One of the times we came in 3rd, our name was "Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em." After more amusing names that bordered on embarrassing personal stories and running out of embarrassing moments to create the names, a few weeks ago, Jill blurted out, "My second cousin is best friends with George Clooney!" And finding this funny, we made it our team name. Needless to say, team names after have all been on this theme, including: "Babe Ruth is my second cousin!", "George Clooney dated my aunt!" (another Jill gem), "My second cousin won the chess championship in Atlana when he was twelve!", "Nancy Kerrigan is my best friend's second cousin!", and "The Olympic Bronze medalist for Ice Dancing is my second cousin!" You get the idea. I'm waiting for "I once stood behind Seth Green in line at a deli!" to come up.
Back to the story...
So these two people are very nice - one guy, one girl. We make friends. We go through the first round of Quizzo. The guy keeps giving us bad answers, though he was right about one of them. He's a very close talker. Very intense, you know, with the non-blinking eye contact. But he's harmless enough. And drunk. The girl, on the other hand, is sweet as can be and chatting up a storm with us. We're cool.
Now the entire time, the four of us are thinking these two are together. They have good body language, leaning in to chat, smiling at each other the whole time, you know. After a while, it becomes clear that the four of us are playing and the other two are watching with mild amusement, mostly wondering how we knew Bella Lugosi was the answer to one of the questions. The girl is really trying to be very helpful. The guy is drunk, blurting out wrong answers, and then decides to disappear for a while. Which is fine. We girls bond over the next two rounds of Quizzo.
I should mention that Christine has three packs of cigarettes in front of her and Megan and Jill were allowing these friends to bum cigarettes off of them. Very communal that way. We're nice people.
All of a sudden, some random chick who's very drunk comes over to Chris and asks to bum a cigarette. True believers in cigarette karma (as the above implies), she graciously offers one to the girl, who, intense herself, strikes up a conversation with Chris. It's polite and nice, you know, the kind when meeting new people. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, the guy comes back and he steps in to talk to the chick.
What we understand is that she's been playing Quizzo with some friends of hers at the bar. And we quickly turn our attention to the third round, kicking ass, I might add. So us five girls - me, Jill, Chris, Megan, and new girl friend are playing along while the dude and the random cigarette bummer (I'll call her CB) are talking. No big deal.
So we find out the girl and the guy live in the building together or go to school together or something like that. And she says after the third round that she has to leave soon because she's got class in the morning. She decides to stay for the last round, but decides afterwards to peace out. She tells us that she's happy she met us and would it be okay for her to come next Tuesday for Quizzo and the girls proceed to tell her it will be great, especially since I'm not going to be there, they'll be a person down anyway, blah blah blah. She leaves and we're happy to have met her.
As she does, she has to interrupt the guy and CB and tells him she's leaving, he hugs her, tells her he'll talk to her later and she leaves with the, "love you" line.
We're sort of confused.
Then again, I have some good guy friends who end conversations with me like that, too. So okay. We thought they were together. Now we find out they aren't. Fine. Whatever.
I should mention that at this point the way we were sitting. Here's a diagram - I'm procrastinating, okay? And a set designer. This is what I do.
Megan left after the third round. So Jill, Megan, and me found ourselves the sole players on the team remaining. In the meantime, CB and Dude move over to the table. Which is fine. Except that if you look carefully at the diagram above, we were pressed for space to begin with and we were in a small area.
So it ended up looking like this:
Now, this will come across as mean, but why not go back to her table? Hmm? Obviously they were in their own world. Except that this girl had the voice that reminded you of nails on a chalkboard. And she talked loud. And a lot. I've already mentioned he was a close talker.
You know where this is going.
So as we tried to listen to the last questions over her annoying voice and his loud drunk one, we found ourselves getting annoyed and frustrated.
And because of the way we were sitting, we couldn't engage in meaningful conversation.
The conversation stopped between the three of us as we couldn't help but listen to their conversation, passing notes to each other like we were in school, laughing at the situation and conveying all of this through our eyes and looks at each other. Over the course of a month, we've learned how to read each other's faces. And so we were kind of amused, but really really annoyed at the same time.
Wanna know what they were talking about? Well, she was going on and on about Ovid and how "beautiful" it is to be educated, what she learned at Columbia, how "beautiful" her education was, how she's fluent in French, how her father is an ophthalmologist and "likes eyeballs", her childhood, how fantastic ancient literature is.
And on and on.
And he was leaning in, touching her at times as he responded to her with, "I'm sorry, I've just never met anyone so passionate as you." Puhlease.
She kept going on about fine art, how "beautiful" it is, how she doesn't get modern art, and more things that made us want to poke our eyeballs out of our eye sockets with the pen and throw them across the table at them.
He tried to respond equally educated about his experience at Penn before she started going on about doing really well on the LSAT and how she got into law school and she just didn't know, there were so many "beautiful" things out there she was so into and not sure about going to law school.
By the way, this all takes place in the span of a half hour. I've never seen a pickup meeting go in so many different directions at once, mostly because she had verbal diarrhea.
During all of this, we were trying hard not to be obvious with our displeasure, but found it difficult to sustain any sort of conversation with this chick yammering on.
We instead focused on chugging our beers and getting the hell out of there.
Chris got up to go to the bathroom and the dude reached over to her cigarette box (she smartly put away the extras) and finding it empty, picked up Jill's pack and proceeded to give one to the chick and one for himself before taking her lighter to light them.
Um.
This was fine when he was actually talking to us. Now that he had spent the last two hours listening to her in hopes of bringing her home, we weren't feeling as gracious as we had before.
AND THEN she starts yammering about The Trojan Women and explaining to him the story. I'm slightly amused because this is all about sex. In The Trojan Women, to stop a war the women felt were unjust, they withhold sex from their husbands to earn world peace. In a nutshell. And she's going on and on about a woman's place and how the men make the decisions, so they are doomed to fail, blah blah blah. At which point, I started getting angry. But then she cuts off that thought by saying, "That Aristophanes was amusing. And a great read." He starts telling her how he's reading French literature from the 1800's, which she finds appalling, exclaiming how much she hates that literature. Now Jill and I have both taken TM's Ancient Greek and Roman Theatre class (or whatever it's called) and we're just highly amused at her critique of that amusing Aristophanes. BECAUSE EURIPIDES, NOT ARISTOPHANES, WROTE THE TROJAN WOMEN.
Now we're running for the door. The only thing we say to them as we leave is Chris asking for her jacket that the Dude has been sitting on for the last two hours. We leave without another word. We get to the door and once on the other side, start laughing and saying how annoying the last two hours were.
As I drive away, I see the dude walking with her, taking her home. I call Chris and Jill. And we laugh and say, "well, that was the most ridiculous pickup I've ever seen. And we saw it all."
That, my friends, was the most annoying Quizzo we've ever sat through. From here on out, we're just going to have to get there at 9:30 to get our own table. Never again.
Oh, and by the way, this guy is still a douchebag. And is it just me, or does he look like Sloth from The Goonies?
I fucking hate Tom DeLay. I rarely use that kind of profanity on this blog, but the Christ, I can't stand him.
Right. Off to finish up this work.
This story goes out to my Philly Chicas.
I'm all about making new friends. One time, a lady on a plane asked if we knew each other because I looked very familiar. When I replied no, she answered, "Well, that's okay. I have friends I haven't met yet." Nice sentiment.
I'm saying this because last night, we decided to schedule a Quizzo night since I'm leaving for Albany on Tuesday (got the confirmation).
So by the time Jill and I got there after viewing Elizabethtown - much better than the critics have said it is - we found Megan and Christine at a table with two people we didn't know. Turns out there was no other available table and instead of leaving after dinner, these folks decided to stay and wanted to play Quizzo on our team. Okay.
So after yet another "_insert celebrity/sports figure/random person name_ is best friends with my second cousin!" team name, we settled in for a game of Thursday night Quizzo, hoping to better our below average placements as of late.
Let me stop here to explain the team names. We used to be "Honk if you Heart Butt-Sex," a name not so much vulgar as funny because it's related to a very funny story. But we weren't doing so good with the name. One of the times we came in 3rd, our name was "Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em." After more amusing names that bordered on embarrassing personal stories and running out of embarrassing moments to create the names, a few weeks ago, Jill blurted out, "My second cousin is best friends with George Clooney!" And finding this funny, we made it our team name. Needless to say, team names after have all been on this theme, including: "Babe Ruth is my second cousin!", "George Clooney dated my aunt!" (another Jill gem), "My second cousin won the chess championship in Atlana when he was twelve!", "Nancy Kerrigan is my best friend's second cousin!", and "The Olympic Bronze medalist for Ice Dancing is my second cousin!" You get the idea. I'm waiting for "I once stood behind Seth Green in line at a deli!" to come up.
Back to the story...
So these two people are very nice - one guy, one girl. We make friends. We go through the first round of Quizzo. The guy keeps giving us bad answers, though he was right about one of them. He's a very close talker. Very intense, you know, with the non-blinking eye contact. But he's harmless enough. And drunk. The girl, on the other hand, is sweet as can be and chatting up a storm with us. We're cool.
Now the entire time, the four of us are thinking these two are together. They have good body language, leaning in to chat, smiling at each other the whole time, you know. After a while, it becomes clear that the four of us are playing and the other two are watching with mild amusement, mostly wondering how we knew Bella Lugosi was the answer to one of the questions. The girl is really trying to be very helpful. The guy is drunk, blurting out wrong answers, and then decides to disappear for a while. Which is fine. We girls bond over the next two rounds of Quizzo.
I should mention that Christine has three packs of cigarettes in front of her and Megan and Jill were allowing these friends to bum cigarettes off of them. Very communal that way. We're nice people.
All of a sudden, some random chick who's very drunk comes over to Chris and asks to bum a cigarette. True believers in cigarette karma (as the above implies), she graciously offers one to the girl, who, intense herself, strikes up a conversation with Chris. It's polite and nice, you know, the kind when meeting new people. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, the guy comes back and he steps in to talk to the chick.
What we understand is that she's been playing Quizzo with some friends of hers at the bar. And we quickly turn our attention to the third round, kicking ass, I might add. So us five girls - me, Jill, Chris, Megan, and new girl friend are playing along while the dude and the random cigarette bummer (I'll call her CB) are talking. No big deal.
So we find out the girl and the guy live in the building together or go to school together or something like that. And she says after the third round that she has to leave soon because she's got class in the morning. She decides to stay for the last round, but decides afterwards to peace out. She tells us that she's happy she met us and would it be okay for her to come next Tuesday for Quizzo and the girls proceed to tell her it will be great, especially since I'm not going to be there, they'll be a person down anyway, blah blah blah. She leaves and we're happy to have met her.
As she does, she has to interrupt the guy and CB and tells him she's leaving, he hugs her, tells her he'll talk to her later and she leaves with the, "love you" line.
We're sort of confused.
Then again, I have some good guy friends who end conversations with me like that, too. So okay. We thought they were together. Now we find out they aren't. Fine. Whatever.
I should mention that at this point the way we were sitting. Here's a diagram - I'm procrastinating, okay? And a set designer. This is what I do.
Megan left after the third round. So Jill, Megan, and me found ourselves the sole players on the team remaining. In the meantime, CB and Dude move over to the table. Which is fine. Except that if you look carefully at the diagram above, we were pressed for space to begin with and we were in a small area.
So it ended up looking like this:
Now, this will come across as mean, but why not go back to her table? Hmm? Obviously they were in their own world. Except that this girl had the voice that reminded you of nails on a chalkboard. And she talked loud. And a lot. I've already mentioned he was a close talker.
You know where this is going.
So as we tried to listen to the last questions over her annoying voice and his loud drunk one, we found ourselves getting annoyed and frustrated.
And because of the way we were sitting, we couldn't engage in meaningful conversation.
The conversation stopped between the three of us as we couldn't help but listen to their conversation, passing notes to each other like we were in school, laughing at the situation and conveying all of this through our eyes and looks at each other. Over the course of a month, we've learned how to read each other's faces. And so we were kind of amused, but really really annoyed at the same time.
Wanna know what they were talking about? Well, she was going on and on about Ovid and how "beautiful" it is to be educated, what she learned at Columbia, how "beautiful" her education was, how she's fluent in French, how her father is an ophthalmologist and "likes eyeballs", her childhood, how fantastic ancient literature is.
And on and on.
And he was leaning in, touching her at times as he responded to her with, "I'm sorry, I've just never met anyone so passionate as you." Puhlease.
She kept going on about fine art, how "beautiful" it is, how she doesn't get modern art, and more things that made us want to poke our eyeballs out of our eye sockets with the pen and throw them across the table at them.
He tried to respond equally educated about his experience at Penn before she started going on about doing really well on the LSAT and how she got into law school and she just didn't know, there were so many "beautiful" things out there she was so into and not sure about going to law school.
By the way, this all takes place in the span of a half hour. I've never seen a pickup meeting go in so many different directions at once, mostly because she had verbal diarrhea.
During all of this, we were trying hard not to be obvious with our displeasure, but found it difficult to sustain any sort of conversation with this chick yammering on.
We instead focused on chugging our beers and getting the hell out of there.
Chris got up to go to the bathroom and the dude reached over to her cigarette box (she smartly put away the extras) and finding it empty, picked up Jill's pack and proceeded to give one to the chick and one for himself before taking her lighter to light them.
Um.
This was fine when he was actually talking to us. Now that he had spent the last two hours listening to her in hopes of bringing her home, we weren't feeling as gracious as we had before.
AND THEN she starts yammering about The Trojan Women and explaining to him the story. I'm slightly amused because this is all about sex. In The Trojan Women, to stop a war the women felt were unjust, they withhold sex from their husbands to earn world peace. In a nutshell. And she's going on and on about a woman's place and how the men make the decisions, so they are doomed to fail, blah blah blah. At which point, I started getting angry. But then she cuts off that thought by saying, "That Aristophanes was amusing. And a great read." He starts telling her how he's reading French literature from the 1800's, which she finds appalling, exclaiming how much she hates that literature. Now Jill and I have both taken TM's Ancient Greek and Roman Theatre class (or whatever it's called) and we're just highly amused at her critique of that amusing Aristophanes. BECAUSE EURIPIDES, NOT ARISTOPHANES, WROTE THE TROJAN WOMEN.
Now we're running for the door. The only thing we say to them as we leave is Chris asking for her jacket that the Dude has been sitting on for the last two hours. We leave without another word. We get to the door and once on the other side, start laughing and saying how annoying the last two hours were.
As I drive away, I see the dude walking with her, taking her home. I call Chris and Jill. And we laugh and say, "well, that was the most ridiculous pickup I've ever seen. And we saw it all."
That, my friends, was the most annoying Quizzo we've ever sat through. From here on out, we're just going to have to get there at 9:30 to get our own table. Never again.
Oh, and by the way, this guy is still a douchebag. And is it just me, or does he look like Sloth from The Goonies?
I fucking hate Tom DeLay. I rarely use that kind of profanity on this blog, but the Christ, I can't stand him.
Right. Off to finish up this work.
10.20.2005
Yes, I have been extremely wayward in my blogging duties.
For the few of you who actually read this, I have decided to forego my blogging of the trip to the Brown land. Why? Because the next few days are extremely depressing posts detailing my fathers funeral and for now I'd like to stay out of therapy and subject all of you to it - no "Read my pain!" blogs right now. I know I will need some sort of therapy somewhere down the road for all the shitstorms I've faced in my life, but I have to remember that few of you are licensed therapists and after the trauma of the past few months, I need to pay all of you and my incredible support group and frankly, I don't have that kind of dough. Besides, I need something to talk to my future therapist about.
So some of you might actually say, "But why, Monkee, I've been very interested in your stories from the homeland?!" And I will answer, yes, someday I will scribe stories about the Philippines that will make you laugh and cry. But not today.
Things have been very hectic for me out here in the past few weeks. But there's big news: I HAVE A NEW JOB. Effective sometime they unclog the papers from the hopper in AFSCME Land. Those AFSCME employees who read this know what I mean. Basically, my old boss got a new job in DC and they needed someone to replace her. And I was the lucky one. So I expect in the next few days to be shuffled off to Buffalo (I've always wanted to say that, sort of) to work on the Mayor's race.
Right. I didn't actually tell you what I was going to be doing.
Basically, I'm moving to Albany. I'm still with AFSCME and this is a great position for a New Yorker like myself. I'll still be working on campaigns and doing the talking with legislators thing, except I get a fancy new title, pay raise, a hell of a lot more stability, a home base, and traveling mostly around my home state and the state I love the best (Maryland is a close second). So I'm excited for the new opportunity and to get back to the place I know very well and keep fighting the man.
Speaking of...
I've been busy because last week was a big week of activity for us left-of-center kids. So in usual Keeza fashion, I'm reclaiming my soapbox. I promise it won't be long. Too long, anyway.
See, with Katrina hitting the Gulf Coast and finally some honest discussion about the differences in economics (i.e. Poor People in this country who were left to fend for themselves during one of the worst hurricanes in history), we at AFSCME and other like-minded groups are rallying around the country to push the House and Senate to stop their assault on low-income and hard-working families with further budget cuts to essential programs such as food stamps and Medicaid and fighting against the $70 million in tax cuts to the wealthiest 2% of Americans.
Hi, I've been speechwriting for a week. Can you tell?
So we planned big "Speak-Out" events in targeted states across the country and AFSCME found members in Louisiana affected by the storm and these Katrina survivors agreed to travel across the country to tell their stories. It was amazing.
So we had this awesome survivor up in Delaware for a week - we had the luxury of spending lots of time with Michele. And finding her a wonderful and positive person, we felt okay to ask her some questions about Katrina and what happened, etc.
I found my Coro interview skills well at hand spending time with her. I found out some really important information about what actually happened on the ground out there. And it's the story we aren't hearing.
Before I actually get up on the soapbox to shake my fist at the Administration and Republican Leadership, I'm saving that for the next post. Let's just say that after last week and finding some free time on my hands ironing my laundry from two months, I've been watching a lot of Bill Maher.
Instead, I choose to impart this knowledge from Michele directly to you and then next post, I'll get into the usual ranting and raving. Mmmmkay?
So we took Michele to lunch and as usual, got on the topic of politics and the right. This was where we started asking the good questions. Here's what she told us:
1. Yes, the Administration and FEMA are definitely at fault. But the folks in Louisiana who were there will also give lots of criticism to the Mayor and the Governor. There's plenty of blame to go around. The folks in "power" in New Orleans made bad decisions and the President was too busy clearing bush on his ranch to be bothered. They all know this and they will be the first to say that blame starts with the Mayor of New Orleans, the Governor of Louisiana, the President of the United States, and FEMA. There's no other way to look at it. No blame can be assigned to one party or the other. Tragedies of this kind are usually the fault of many people failing to react in the proper ways.
2. Many people who stuck around New Orleans weren't just too lazy or too poor to get out of town. Many of them had reasons for staying, amongst them: family members in the hospital, entire lives wrapped around their homes, and the obvious: by the time they realized how bad it was going to be, it was too late. And here's where it becomes the problem of economic divide - people didn't have the means to get out quick enough before it hit. Nor were the resources available for them to leave.
3. The Mayor and Governor decided not to use all the school buses at their advantage. By the time the storm hit, the buses were under several feet of water and couldn't get out. So all those people who might have had a chance were never given a choice.
4. The day after Katrina hit and the levees broke, the water was rising rapidly - something we have all heard. But by this time, Army trucks had already started going around. At the point Michele saw them, she was up to her chest in water (and she's tall) and her and her husband were on top of their SUV, calling out to the folks in the trucks to come and help them. And get this: their answer was, "Sorry, we're not allowed to do that."
I'll just let that one sit for a minute.
5. The helicopters were only rescuing folks one at a time, unlike what their actual capacities can handle, which is drop a net and get several people to safety quickly. Why? No one really knows or understands, but the process was extremely slow and could have been much quicker (this is information we probably all know, but hearing it from someone on the ground confirms it).
I'm trying to remember all of the stuff, but here's the most fascinating and in my mind, egregious one:
6. Think this whole "poor" discussion about Katrina is bull? When the Army Corps was deciding which levees to blow up to alleviate the problem of the rising water and to let the water out, they made an interesting choice. Now many of us were relieved to hear that the French Quarter was not badly damaged. BECAUSE THEY MADE A CONSCIOUS DECISION, NOT BECAUSE IT IS ON HIGHER GROUND. Instead of blowing the levee above the French Quarter to help drain the water, they opted for the levee below it. The problem is the levee below it was keeping a lot of water out of East New Orleans, known as a very poor part of town. They made the decision to blow the lower levee, causing the water to flow out and further damage the area of town where they knew a majority of folks who didn't get out of town were. So in case you're unsure: INSTEAD OF SACRIFICING THE FRENCH QUARTER TO FURTHER DAMAGE AND PROBABLY SAVE MORE LIVES AND POSSIBLY PROPERTY, THEY DECIDED TO INSTEAD FURTHER DAMAGE THE FOLKS HARDEST HIT BY THE STORM AND LET THEM FEND FOR THEMSELVES.
I am not making any of this up. I know that the situation down there was dire and terrible, but looking at the decision-making process, one has to start asking some serious questions. Because I promise you, if this was Beverly Hills, or an affluent suburb of Michigan, I seriously doubt these decisions would be different. The difference would be that those folks who had the money would have been gone and they would have saved Rodeo Drive and wiped out Compton instead. I realize they're not in the same area, but you know what I mean.
It's like when they were cutting the budget in New York after 9/11 and got rid of the twice a week garbage pick ups in parts of Manhattan. Where did they cut the trash pickup from two to one first? Spanish Harlem, Washington Heights, and parts of Harlem, USA. Basically anywhere the minorities and poorer New Yorkers live in neighborhoods. I asked then if such decision making was right and I ask again now.
And with the President and leading Republicans so good at the spin game, pointing the fingers and moving the discussion from poverty to "rebuilding" and "economic development" is it not hard to see what their plans are actually going to do? If the President has his way and creates these "economic zones" and "development zones" in rebuilt New Orleans, what happens to the 9th Ward (the Democratic stronghold in a mostly lower-income area)? What happens to the people who have had land in New Orleans from the sharecropping days handed down to them by generations of family who are technically just above the poverty line (a line they keep moving down to empirically state that poverty is on the decline)? They won't be able to afford "rebuilt New Orleans" at all, will they? And where do they go?
Katrina offers us a chance to make things better and to fix the problems. It shed light on the most stubborn residues of racism - economic inequality. And because of the turn in discussion, it was the shortest attention to poverty in this crazy 24-hour news cycle. I know it's depressing to talk about such things, but it is our biggest chance in decades to have an honest discussion about it.
And it shames me to know that it's already slipped many of our minds. Because we all know too well what happens when our attention moves from an honest discussion about poverty to Tomkitten.
I think it's up to all of us who really want change next year to fight to keep it in the forefront. We've got another storm approaching soon and can we please finally talk again about Global Warming? The President and the Republican leadership are finally getting slammed. When Ann Coulter (who is a man) and Andrew Sullivan say they can't trust the president again, we gotta push the issue. And we need to find the right voices to do it - I'm not afraid to pick fights with my own party here, either.
It's time to step to the plate, friends. And not let them forget it.
Oh. And Tom Cruise is gay, anyway. This whole Tomkitten thing was said best by SF this evening: "Either Katie Holmes is about to have an alien anti-christ child or it's gonna come out looking like Chris Klein because she's just Tom's beard." 'Nuff said. Let's get it off the front page now. And get back to the things that really matter.
Back soon to get on the soapbox, I'm just getting started.
That wasn't so long, was it?
Take care of yourselves. And each other.
For the few of you who actually read this, I have decided to forego my blogging of the trip to the Brown land. Why? Because the next few days are extremely depressing posts detailing my fathers funeral and for now I'd like to stay out of therapy and subject all of you to it - no "Read my pain!" blogs right now. I know I will need some sort of therapy somewhere down the road for all the shitstorms I've faced in my life, but I have to remember that few of you are licensed therapists and after the trauma of the past few months, I need to pay all of you and my incredible support group and frankly, I don't have that kind of dough. Besides, I need something to talk to my future therapist about.
So some of you might actually say, "But why, Monkee, I've been very interested in your stories from the homeland?!" And I will answer, yes, someday I will scribe stories about the Philippines that will make you laugh and cry. But not today.
Things have been very hectic for me out here in the past few weeks. But there's big news: I HAVE A NEW JOB. Effective sometime they unclog the papers from the hopper in AFSCME Land. Those AFSCME employees who read this know what I mean. Basically, my old boss got a new job in DC and they needed someone to replace her. And I was the lucky one. So I expect in the next few days to be shuffled off to Buffalo (I've always wanted to say that, sort of) to work on the Mayor's race.
Right. I didn't actually tell you what I was going to be doing.
Basically, I'm moving to Albany. I'm still with AFSCME and this is a great position for a New Yorker like myself. I'll still be working on campaigns and doing the talking with legislators thing, except I get a fancy new title, pay raise, a hell of a lot more stability, a home base, and traveling mostly around my home state and the state I love the best (Maryland is a close second). So I'm excited for the new opportunity and to get back to the place I know very well and keep fighting the man.
Speaking of...
I've been busy because last week was a big week of activity for us left-of-center kids. So in usual Keeza fashion, I'm reclaiming my soapbox. I promise it won't be long. Too long, anyway.
See, with Katrina hitting the Gulf Coast and finally some honest discussion about the differences in economics (i.e. Poor People in this country who were left to fend for themselves during one of the worst hurricanes in history), we at AFSCME and other like-minded groups are rallying around the country to push the House and Senate to stop their assault on low-income and hard-working families with further budget cuts to essential programs such as food stamps and Medicaid and fighting against the $70 million in tax cuts to the wealthiest 2% of Americans.
Hi, I've been speechwriting for a week. Can you tell?
So we planned big "Speak-Out" events in targeted states across the country and AFSCME found members in Louisiana affected by the storm and these Katrina survivors agreed to travel across the country to tell their stories. It was amazing.
So we had this awesome survivor up in Delaware for a week - we had the luxury of spending lots of time with Michele. And finding her a wonderful and positive person, we felt okay to ask her some questions about Katrina and what happened, etc.
I found my Coro interview skills well at hand spending time with her. I found out some really important information about what actually happened on the ground out there. And it's the story we aren't hearing.
Before I actually get up on the soapbox to shake my fist at the Administration and Republican Leadership, I'm saving that for the next post. Let's just say that after last week and finding some free time on my hands ironing my laundry from two months, I've been watching a lot of Bill Maher.
Instead, I choose to impart this knowledge from Michele directly to you and then next post, I'll get into the usual ranting and raving. Mmmmkay?
So we took Michele to lunch and as usual, got on the topic of politics and the right. This was where we started asking the good questions. Here's what she told us:
1. Yes, the Administration and FEMA are definitely at fault. But the folks in Louisiana who were there will also give lots of criticism to the Mayor and the Governor. There's plenty of blame to go around. The folks in "power" in New Orleans made bad decisions and the President was too busy clearing bush on his ranch to be bothered. They all know this and they will be the first to say that blame starts with the Mayor of New Orleans, the Governor of Louisiana, the President of the United States, and FEMA. There's no other way to look at it. No blame can be assigned to one party or the other. Tragedies of this kind are usually the fault of many people failing to react in the proper ways.
2. Many people who stuck around New Orleans weren't just too lazy or too poor to get out of town. Many of them had reasons for staying, amongst them: family members in the hospital, entire lives wrapped around their homes, and the obvious: by the time they realized how bad it was going to be, it was too late. And here's where it becomes the problem of economic divide - people didn't have the means to get out quick enough before it hit. Nor were the resources available for them to leave.
3. The Mayor and Governor decided not to use all the school buses at their advantage. By the time the storm hit, the buses were under several feet of water and couldn't get out. So all those people who might have had a chance were never given a choice.
4. The day after Katrina hit and the levees broke, the water was rising rapidly - something we have all heard. But by this time, Army trucks had already started going around. At the point Michele saw them, she was up to her chest in water (and she's tall) and her and her husband were on top of their SUV, calling out to the folks in the trucks to come and help them. And get this: their answer was, "Sorry, we're not allowed to do that."
I'll just let that one sit for a minute.
5. The helicopters were only rescuing folks one at a time, unlike what their actual capacities can handle, which is drop a net and get several people to safety quickly. Why? No one really knows or understands, but the process was extremely slow and could have been much quicker (this is information we probably all know, but hearing it from someone on the ground confirms it).
I'm trying to remember all of the stuff, but here's the most fascinating and in my mind, egregious one:
6. Think this whole "poor" discussion about Katrina is bull? When the Army Corps was deciding which levees to blow up to alleviate the problem of the rising water and to let the water out, they made an interesting choice. Now many of us were relieved to hear that the French Quarter was not badly damaged. BECAUSE THEY MADE A CONSCIOUS DECISION, NOT BECAUSE IT IS ON HIGHER GROUND. Instead of blowing the levee above the French Quarter to help drain the water, they opted for the levee below it. The problem is the levee below it was keeping a lot of water out of East New Orleans, known as a very poor part of town. They made the decision to blow the lower levee, causing the water to flow out and further damage the area of town where they knew a majority of folks who didn't get out of town were. So in case you're unsure: INSTEAD OF SACRIFICING THE FRENCH QUARTER TO FURTHER DAMAGE AND PROBABLY SAVE MORE LIVES AND POSSIBLY PROPERTY, THEY DECIDED TO INSTEAD FURTHER DAMAGE THE FOLKS HARDEST HIT BY THE STORM AND LET THEM FEND FOR THEMSELVES.
I am not making any of this up. I know that the situation down there was dire and terrible, but looking at the decision-making process, one has to start asking some serious questions. Because I promise you, if this was Beverly Hills, or an affluent suburb of Michigan, I seriously doubt these decisions would be different. The difference would be that those folks who had the money would have been gone and they would have saved Rodeo Drive and wiped out Compton instead. I realize they're not in the same area, but you know what I mean.
It's like when they were cutting the budget in New York after 9/11 and got rid of the twice a week garbage pick ups in parts of Manhattan. Where did they cut the trash pickup from two to one first? Spanish Harlem, Washington Heights, and parts of Harlem, USA. Basically anywhere the minorities and poorer New Yorkers live in neighborhoods. I asked then if such decision making was right and I ask again now.
And with the President and leading Republicans so good at the spin game, pointing the fingers and moving the discussion from poverty to "rebuilding" and "economic development" is it not hard to see what their plans are actually going to do? If the President has his way and creates these "economic zones" and "development zones" in rebuilt New Orleans, what happens to the 9th Ward (the Democratic stronghold in a mostly lower-income area)? What happens to the people who have had land in New Orleans from the sharecropping days handed down to them by generations of family who are technically just above the poverty line (a line they keep moving down to empirically state that poverty is on the decline)? They won't be able to afford "rebuilt New Orleans" at all, will they? And where do they go?
Katrina offers us a chance to make things better and to fix the problems. It shed light on the most stubborn residues of racism - economic inequality. And because of the turn in discussion, it was the shortest attention to poverty in this crazy 24-hour news cycle. I know it's depressing to talk about such things, but it is our biggest chance in decades to have an honest discussion about it.
And it shames me to know that it's already slipped many of our minds. Because we all know too well what happens when our attention moves from an honest discussion about poverty to Tomkitten.
I think it's up to all of us who really want change next year to fight to keep it in the forefront. We've got another storm approaching soon and can we please finally talk again about Global Warming? The President and the Republican leadership are finally getting slammed. When Ann Coulter (who is a man) and Andrew Sullivan say they can't trust the president again, we gotta push the issue. And we need to find the right voices to do it - I'm not afraid to pick fights with my own party here, either.
It's time to step to the plate, friends. And not let them forget it.
Oh. And Tom Cruise is gay, anyway. This whole Tomkitten thing was said best by SF this evening: "Either Katie Holmes is about to have an alien anti-christ child or it's gonna come out looking like Chris Klein because she's just Tom's beard." 'Nuff said. Let's get it off the front page now. And get back to the things that really matter.
Back soon to get on the soapbox, I'm just getting started.
That wasn't so long, was it?
Take care of yourselves. And each other.
10.03.2005
I know I said I'd blog every day. But after such lengthy posts, I decided that my loyal readers needed some time to digest my posts. So I decided to wait for a little before continuing my stories from the Land of Brown.
That and my dsl line at home is down until tomorrow when the technician will come and fix it sometime between 12 and 4pm. Yeah. My ass. Chances are, they'll show up at 4:30. Neat.
I would like to take a quick second to display my joy and affection for my Bronx Bombers - all of those "Yankee Fans" who told me they sucked all year and that they wouldn't survive to the post-season can kiss it. I had no doubts. My boys play in October. Few things are more certain than that. In the meantime, I know I can at least enjoy another week of Yankee watching, one of my favorite pasttimes in the world.
Now. Lest I forget that I have a mission here, I shall regale you will more stories from the Philippines. Before I do, instead of posting one picture or several at a time, click on the link below to see pics of my homeland. You can also find these pics on a lick on the right.
PICTURES FROM THE PHILIPPINES
Without further ado:
I forgot about the traffic. But we've already covered this.
Today my mother, my uncle, my aunt, and I (and some other assorted random family members) have to go to the cemetary to make all of the arrangements.
As we drive along, I take stock of my surroundings.
Besides the traffic, I have forgotten about the poverty here. (Check the pictures link to see what I mean)
Well, I should be honest. It's difficult to forget. From the time I was three, the faces and eyes of countless Filipino men, women, and children have remained in my memory as they begged me on street corners, staring into our stopped car, staring at us with hands outstretched.
Driving along the way, I am struck by the shabby, corrugated cardboard, tin, and wood scraps making up the walls of shacks. Spaces are left between them for windows, stacked one on top of the others, clothes hung out to dry from wire between the windows, families sitting on top of their shacks on what looks to be a very thin tin.
I started thinking about my uncle's house that I was staying at. How big, how modern, how beautiful. And I'm seeing these people, living in filth, amongst rats and dire poverty. And I start to feel helpless.
I can't help but remember a thought I had when I was eight and I visited: "This is the face of poverty. So many of my friends would never believe this exists." I'm looking at the same sight - sitting smack across the street from mansions and businesses that have grown around them. Manila is easily the ugliest city in the Philippines - and because they haven't planned the city as nicely as they could have. I remember thinking then the same thing I'm thinking now: "There are people who live like this in the U.S. But so many Americans don't know. This is what we as a people are missing - the forgotten people who are forced to live like this." I don't feel any better.
They say things in the Philippines won't change for at least 20 years. Besides new buildings, I've noticed it has been the same since I remember coming.
Here, the rich get richer, the poor live in shacks but have cards and pirated flat-screens. The government is corrupt and there hasn't been anything really new since Marcos was in power. I see my homeland suffering from these consequences and the mindset and I am even more upset.
I can start to make comparisons now, but I'll wait until I return to the states and digest all of this first.
I can sum all of this up by saying and asking: The country of my family must rise anew before anything changes. And the country of my birth also needs to wake up. It seems that everyone has much work to do. But who will be the ones brave enough to take on that task? Where have all the leaders gone?
That and my dsl line at home is down until tomorrow when the technician will come and fix it sometime between 12 and 4pm. Yeah. My ass. Chances are, they'll show up at 4:30. Neat.
I would like to take a quick second to display my joy and affection for my Bronx Bombers - all of those "Yankee Fans" who told me they sucked all year and that they wouldn't survive to the post-season can kiss it. I had no doubts. My boys play in October. Few things are more certain than that. In the meantime, I know I can at least enjoy another week of Yankee watching, one of my favorite pasttimes in the world.
Now. Lest I forget that I have a mission here, I shall regale you will more stories from the Philippines. Before I do, instead of posting one picture or several at a time, click on the link below to see pics of my homeland. You can also find these pics on a lick on the right.
PICTURES FROM THE PHILIPPINES
Without further ado:
SEPTEMBER 12, 2005 (US, MONDAY)
LOCATION: MANILA TRAFFIC
TIME: 1150 AM, MANILA; 11:50 PM, NEW YORK (SEPTEMBER 11)
I forgot about the traffic. But we've already covered this.
Today my mother, my uncle, my aunt, and I (and some other assorted random family members) have to go to the cemetary to make all of the arrangements.
As we drive along, I take stock of my surroundings.
Besides the traffic, I have forgotten about the poverty here. (Check the pictures link to see what I mean)
Well, I should be honest. It's difficult to forget. From the time I was three, the faces and eyes of countless Filipino men, women, and children have remained in my memory as they begged me on street corners, staring into our stopped car, staring at us with hands outstretched.
Driving along the way, I am struck by the shabby, corrugated cardboard, tin, and wood scraps making up the walls of shacks. Spaces are left between them for windows, stacked one on top of the others, clothes hung out to dry from wire between the windows, families sitting on top of their shacks on what looks to be a very thin tin.
I started thinking about my uncle's house that I was staying at. How big, how modern, how beautiful. And I'm seeing these people, living in filth, amongst rats and dire poverty. And I start to feel helpless.
I can't help but remember a thought I had when I was eight and I visited: "This is the face of poverty. So many of my friends would never believe this exists." I'm looking at the same sight - sitting smack across the street from mansions and businesses that have grown around them. Manila is easily the ugliest city in the Philippines - and because they haven't planned the city as nicely as they could have. I remember thinking then the same thing I'm thinking now: "There are people who live like this in the U.S. But so many Americans don't know. This is what we as a people are missing - the forgotten people who are forced to live like this." I don't feel any better.
They say things in the Philippines won't change for at least 20 years. Besides new buildings, I've noticed it has been the same since I remember coming.
Here, the rich get richer, the poor live in shacks but have cards and pirated flat-screens. The government is corrupt and there hasn't been anything really new since Marcos was in power. I see my homeland suffering from these consequences and the mindset and I am even more upset.
I can start to make comparisons now, but I'll wait until I return to the states and digest all of this first.
I can sum all of this up by saying and asking: The country of my family must rise anew before anything changes. And the country of my birth also needs to wake up. It seems that everyone has much work to do. But who will be the ones brave enough to take on that task? Where have all the leaders gone?
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