Que voy a hacer

Yay! After a late-night breath of post-rain fresh air, a plateful of shawarma, a glass of Estrella (Damm) and a cup of Mediterranean-style (i.e. strong as f$%&) coffee, I am wired up and ready to cast a blog your way from Marta´s place in Barcelona.

The UK part of the plan fell through, like a hammer dropped through a soggy pancake, otherwise I wouldn´t be here at the moment. Por desgracia I had timed that trip to coincide with Jared (sorry, no more blog, no more pseudonym) and Marta´s 5-day jaunt to Switzerland (I believe Jared went to escape the Werewolf Women of the SS), but fortunately, Marta was kind-hearted enough to let me crash at her place while they were gone ... could one ask for a sweeter deal? One could not. Another plus is the fact that this apartment is right in the middle of a vast grid of plazas and Falafel/Shawarma restaurants, most of which seem to be open till ALWAYS, and a 3-minute walk from the metro station, from which one can access any number of ramblas and beaches. I´m trying to spend as much time as possible at the beach; I won´t be getting any of that when I return to Tokyo, at which point I´ll probably have to change my name to Mr. Deep Red And Peeling for a week or so .. but I´d rather not think about that just now.

Barcelona was pretty much the number one place I wanted to visit this year, for the purpose of checking out where I might want to live if/after the Japan thing eventually "peters out" (sorry Peter). After this weekend I´d definitely say Yes, I could live here if I found some way to make an actual living, though come to think of it I probably say that about every place I go, with the exceptions of Bowling Green, El Paso and Detroit. As expected, it is pretty much the opposite of Japan (though less so than Santa Cruz in Bolivia .. this time there´s no "so how am I going to almost die today" factor), and surprisingly it´s actually easier for me to meet people here than it is in the country where you automatically receive attention for being white or tall, because the people here are open and friendly, as opposed to stiff, robotic and socially awkward like they are in the Land of the Rising Sun That No One Ever Sees Because They Are Working Indoors .. amazing the difference it makes when the smiles people give you are genuine and warm as opposed to surprised or half-terrified.

Anyway, I didn´t bring a camera, so you´ll get no pictures, though it´s not like I´m sightseeing or anything. So far I´ve spent most of my time practicing Capoeira (by myself) in the wet sand of the shoreline at the beach, going to shows (caught the Emergenza semi-finals on Friday night, and then Wolfmother on Saturday, who can actually rock pretty hard, though not quite hard enough for my taste), sitting around in plazas talking to strangers, and drinking the aforementioned Estrella (Barcelonan equivalent to Tecate in Tijuana) in outdoor cafes.

Tomorrow my missions are to do laundry, buy a thing of aloe lotion (me duele la piel!), go back to the beach, and possibly check out a local Capoeira group, since playing by myself is not so much fun (hahahaha).

There´s a beagle howling outside .. maybe I will go join.

Taking a not-so-needed break

Hola hermanos y hermanas ... you see that? I`m practicing my Spanish, for when I go to Spain .. the day after tomorrow. I`ll be there for a few days with Frank/Maletas and his f#$%ing Spanish Lady Friend, and then when they (or he) go(es) to Switzerland, I`m bouncing to the UK to roadie/groupie for my surrogate family Fluttr Effect, just like I did last April. I come back to Japan on the 1st of June, giving me like 10 days total in Europe. Not nearly enough, but still ..

You may be thinking, "What the crap does Dan need a vacation in Europe for? It`s not like he does anything to begin with!" You would be mostly correct. I don`t do very much, but that is not to say that I don`t have a lot of "jobs" for my most prominent employer which require me to be somewhere, in uniform, posing for long periods of time. For example, I just finished up a 7-day stretch of daily appearances at this new complex called Tokyo Midtown in Roppongi, where I had to go up on stage 10+ times a day to pose and assist with this sort of promotional/explanatory presentation .. no, it was not hard work, but I definitely had to be there. This weekend I`m in Fukuoka again (Dante and I cleverly call it Fuk-u-oka) for a Hawks game tomorrow I won`t be playing in, since I`m not a baseball player. This picture that I sent out via email to a bunch of people instead of blogging it for reasons I can`t remember is from the opening ceremony of a game back in April where I got to stand up at the plate and receive the first pitch of the game. I wasn`t allowed to hit the ball (that`s the tradition of the opening ceremony here), but I will say that I`ve been spending a bit of time in the batting cages lately, and I can hit 120km/hr pitches pretty consistently. What do you think, should I try out for the team or what?

In the meantime I will continue to live in hotels (the one I`m at right now is apparently like $300 a night) and spend my days as a f$%&ing poseur. Cheese, biatches.


Other notes of interest:

• Congratulations to Mike and Heidi for having their kid
• If you haven`t seen Grindhouse yet you are wasting your life
• I think I drank this "complimentary" Chardonnay too fast. woooooot
  

Now dig on this

久しぶり、amigos. Last time, I was spouting something about never spending money on anything .. I`ve already sort of reneged upon that, by seeing Spiderman 3 on opening day, and buying the new Bjork album "Volta" from a nearby music store .. while waiting for Spiderman to start.

I actually wanted to do a full track-by-track review of Volta, since it doesn`t seem to come out in the states for another couple days, but I`ll try to sum it up in a paragraph .. first of all, even though I`m a pretty avid Bjork fan, in that I have all of her work and if you say something bad about her I might try to kick you, I`m not blindly biased .. I`ll admit that (and I think I can say this around you guys without getting kicked) I never really got the hang of her most critically acclaimed album Vespertine, and as for Medulla, I didn`t spin that one more than a dozen times before I was like, "all right, time to listen to Selmasongs." My favorites are actually her first 3, the more electronic, "poppier" Bjork, and to me that`s what Volta seems like a throwback to (but not entirely .. there`s also a prominent and beautiful brass section), and I cannot. Get. Enough of it. Seriously, I`ve just been playing it non-stop for a week now (almost .. I took a break today by listening to Watch Them Die while I ran) .. I even did the thing where you fall asleep at night with it on repeat, and it`s still playing when you get up in the morning, and I`m not tired of it at all. I look forward to every song on it while not wanting the current track to end. I think the last time an album hit me like this was Blood Mountain, and before that, Begin To Hope. If you know me, you will know that by these comparisons I am not fooling around. Sorry, I guess it`s not a very good review for me to just say that I really really like this album a lot and feel like even non-Bjork fans should buy it. You think she`s crazy or something? Who cares, buy this album, it`s awesome. "To shut yourself up is the hugest crime of them all." That`s from one of the songs!

Uh, so anyway. If you were ever going to see SM3 you would have done so already last weekend. What did you think? I hate to say it but 2 is still my favorite ... they really should have saved the Venom thing for part 4, I think. This one didn`t need it, or maybe it just really didn`t need the Dark Tobey scene that seemed to have been taken from The Mask. I`d also say that Peter needs to dump MJ for Gwen or Ursula, but I`ll gladly take them instead if he wants to stay with Whiney Bitch Watson. Also, there should be a drinking game for the number of times Harry Osborn gets owned in that movie. Hah! That`s what you get for being James Franco!

I have nothing of actual substance to say right now.