| the blog of human failure
I’ve got a fuzzy memory of being about 6 years old at the beach, playing in the waves and riding them back in towards the sand. I caught the crest of an especially big wave and immediately in my feeble young mind I knew I had, in the sage words of my father, started something that I couldn’t finish. This wave was big and it took me and slammed me directly down into the glittering foggy bottom of the surf and held me tight under six feet of water while it slowly dragged me on my supple young belly towards land. After what felt like over two full minutes completely submerged and helpless I arrived at the shore with the recumbent waves lapping at my feet, blood and pebbles covering my chest, my swimsuit pockets filled with sand. And I cried. I pulled myself up and brushed my off my raw front with pruned and salted fingertips and wandered up and down the shoreline crying. Crushed and bleeding, young and confused at the time I needed them most. Where were my parents. Where were my parents? My parents had gone back to the hotel restaurant to have lunch. This was not some Partridge Family/Mormon pick nick-sized congregation of relations. I’m an only child. Besides their five dollar deposit resort towels, I was all they had to remember to bring along. It was only 45 minutes later when my mother had finished her club sandwich and couldn’t find her room key card that she came plodding back to the life guard station to retrieve her kin.
It’s been two weeks since the last time I addressed you folks. Are you battered broken? Have you wandered out of the woods of isolation where I had so startling plopped you down in the center of? Has the experience allowed you to build character and trap, kill and clean small game? I can’t imagine that it has. Here you are, sitting on the same stump where I left you. And how was my club sandwich, and didn’t I think you would want lunch too? It’s all too obviously that I abandoned you not out of some altruistic attempt to encourage you to develop into adulthood, but out of simple neglect. Neglect of a kind ubiquitous in this lazy solipsistic and fast paced culture. Was the life guard nice to you? How long did you have to wait for mommy? Oh, baby how’d you cut yourself; do you want my pickle?
Of course you don’t want my tragically nonsensical pickle of self redemption. You want loving arms waiting at the shore to run into: a bosom on which to cradle your weighty water logged head. You want consistency and I failed you. Well, the future of the Blog of Human Failure is pledging itself to the fraternal order of consistency, to be here for you several times a week when you need us. We’re at the beginning of a long sturdy effort to rebuild your trust and comfort. We promise never to leave you on your own without explanation again until we do. And I was on vacation, so blow me.
Bon jour one last time from Paris my friends. I’ve got 13 minutes and this ridiculous metal keyboard again. Plus this terminal keeps lagging while the clock ticks. Light the fire; we’re going to burn it down.
Funny Things About Madrid:
1) I’ve found it. The last country. You can still smoke indoors in Spain. It’s the final frontier. Smoke’m while you got’em Spain. If they can get Paris, they can get you.
2) With every beer you order, and I’m talking about a Mahou here, you get a free tapa. Chorizo, potato salad, pistachios, fresh made potato chips, anchovies, quiche, friend potato chunks. You advance a level with every beer you order, and if they have to repeat themselves before you run out of money, then you win.
3) It’s hard to get drunk enough to fall asleep in a room with 14 other people in it and no air conditioning when the bar tender keeps feeding you potato salad.
4) No one is in a hurry to take your money. It always feels like you are bothering someone to pay for something. I guess they figure you have nowhere to go. And in fairness they are right.
5) In Madrid, napkins have the texture of credit card receipts.
6) There is a restaurant by my hostel named Museo de Jamon. My Spanish is rusty I admit, but I think that translates to Ham Museum. And it’s a chain. A chain of Ham Museums. I think that gives you an idea of the kind of city we’re dealing with here.
7) If that doesn’t totally get you there, I went to a bar and behind the counter there was a sweating pig’s leg in a wooden vice-clamp so tapas could be sawed right off of it. Oh, and on the way there I passed protesters in front of a McDonald’s complaining about their treatment of animals. Seriously.
8 ) Last food thing: creamed salami sandwiches, creamed ham sandwiches, creamed anchovy and cheese sandwiches. Like salami put in a blender with heavy cream and put on white bread. Very tasty. Seriously.
9) At 6 AM on a Friday, what sounded like hundreds of drunken Spaniards stood under my window banging on garbage cans for 40 minutes, slurring an espanyol only version of “We Will Rock You.” I love that song!
10) There are lots of deformed beggars in Madrid, and also you’re not supposed to drink the tap water. I’m always suspicious of the correlation.
11) Hey El Grecco. It’s Jesus; we get it. Next topic please. That goes double for you Velazquez.
12) The pedestrian traffic lights beep at you like smoke detectors.
13) And we have a winner. .80 Euro for a Coca-Cola light at a Madrid bodega. At .73 Euros to the dollar, that’s just about Manhattan prices. My new home away from home.
I’ll be back in the USA tomorrow. We’ll make a new plan for going forward together from here after that.
Buenes Noches de Madrid. I´m back to pay internet but I´ve got 24 minutes left on this Euro and no one over my shoulder so we can certainly take our time if we want to. But I´m going to type at my normal comforable pace regardless. Let´s get crackin´.
Funny Things About Barcelona:
1) I´m not talking about mullets here. You´re looking at a guy from the front and he looks perfectly normal. Maybe he has a neatly trimmed goatie, a short hair cut with tight sideburns and then he turns around and -Bam- rat tail! Six inches, eight inches. What a thrill. Twelve inches.
2) Yes, he has a nose ring, she has a nose ring. Whatever, I´m over it.
3) In Figueres, a town outside of Barcelona, there is a 15 meter long metal statue of a heroin spoon created by Salvador Dali. It´s just sitting there on the street. In fairness my Spanish isn´t great, so it could be a heroine´s spoon, but what are the odds?
4) San Miguel is a tasty beer and that´s that.
5) Well I´m in Spain so all of the street signs and instructions will finally be Spanish right? What´s this about Catalan? Well fuck me then.
6) And if you think Catalan and Spanish would be almost the same, you have no idea. For instance in Spanish, the word for the number four is ¨quatro¨, where as in Catalan, it´s ¨oingo-boingo¨.
7) But seriously, you don´t know what a relief it is to say, ¨¿Que derecion es el Metro?¨and not get looked at like an asshole. You wouldn´t be suprised how few times that worked in Paris.
8 ) Every other window has a giant petrified pig´s leg in it. Appetizing.
9) It´s about time. How long does a brother go to be in Europe before he sees some topless sunbathers? Barcelona delivers.
10) If they have pictures of the food on the menu, you´re not going to have a good meal. You think I would know this is an international rule, but you´re forgetting I´m a moron.
11) I know I´m probably the millionth guy to say this, but Gaudi is right. Yech.
12) These people look suspiciously like Puerto Ricans and Cubans. Something is going on here.
13) Black people speaking Spanish. I´m on board; sign me up.
14) 1.10 Euro for a Coca-Cola light. Ahh, refresco! Welcome back to civilization.
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