Larry Bird with chica 

Welshmen! 

Best words to hear when you are boarding the plane

"Our flight tonight is full, so we went ahead and upgraded you to business class."
transatlantic business class turns out to be the only way to fly. they gave me the bose noise cancelling headphones for the duration. the seat is awesome. the food is awesome. you get a little "spa" kit with socks and toothbrush. it just rules so much.
i guess i get rewarded for being stupid and losing my ticket.
ilya

thank you for your support

as if there was ever any doubt. well, there isn't anymore. i am officially the worst person ever to have to have a paper airplane ticket (a.k.a. stupidest person ever). indeed, i have managed to lose my return ticket from milan to london (with its 2 lovely connections). instead i have to hitchhike my way over to london, where american may or may not let me get home. with any luck, i can become like tom hanks in that movie terminal, speak with a corny eastern european russian accent, and wait for a hot chick to fall in love with me (i never saw the movie, but i assume that is what happens). if i am less lucky, i will remain in the greater woburn of italy making a living by selling flashing yoyos and mayonaise sandwiches. prego, prego.

sometimes my job is cool...

Laptop on a bus, huh? Well, I am not one to run away from challenges (he runs like a welshman. doesn’t he run like a welshman?) The autostrasse is making bold moves on a 2-lane mountain road. He must have somewhere to be, or perhaps has not resigned himself to the constant journey aspect of his lot in life (even a bit more so than other people). Maybe he is just trying to shake off the pursuit we encountered in the first yellow-lit tunnel, the myriad lights sending successive shadows hot on our tracks. A 5:30 night has moved in. ahh the shadows once more.

Driving in dusk through the italian alps while listening to tool of all things is a truly incredible activity. Our lord jebus dumped about a foot of snow on Breuil-Cervinia, so everything looks like a fairy tale, one of those that could really go evil or good, and you don’t really know until the very end. Giant white-green arrows pointing heavenward line the slinking path that autostrasse keeps thinking is big enough for him. An echoey requiem on the headphones that builds into drum-breaking power chords. Mountains all around, and green headlights just waiting for their chance to strike. Wolves on leashes in the tiny towns, and christmas merriment to boot.

The drive caps a weekend of ups and downs, as a snowboarding weekend should be. I set out on Saturday morning at 6am from the most american part of the most american city in italia. Milan feels like the us, and the area I am staying in resembles the 128 technology belt without the pretty hills, i.e. woburn. I am staying at a holiday inn, across the street from me is a mcdonald’s and my clients take me to sbarro for authentic italian food. The only reasonable way to get anywhere is a taxi, so I got into mine, and headed to porta garibaldi.

Autostrasse is now trying to drown out my headphones with fucking shania. And succeeding. The already awesome quality of the writing is about to take a big slip. I am torn between wanting autostrasse to die, yet realizing my life is entirely in his hands. Just when I think bernard might convince me to give country a shot, something like this happens.

Anyway, the 3 hour bus ride from Milan to Breuil-Cervinia (that’s “chervinia” to all the ignant folks like me), is incredible. I am smart enough to sit on the mountain side of the bus. Soon after we leave the industrial wasteland that is milan suburbs, the mountains appear. About 20 minutes into their journey, the sun starts coming up directly behind us, lighting up the mountains like koroda during 2001. And we just get further and further in. We pass at least 3 castles, one of them perched up on a hill about 300 meters above the town. Wow I am actually passing the same one right now on the way back. Sweeeet.

There are all these vineyards along the way, running up the side of the mountains. (I think it’s what they are anyway). Finally we hit snow. That type of snow that you know just hangs out from september to may. And then august to june. And then, cervinia, where you can go for summer skiing, cause the snow ain’t got nowhere to go.

I am greeted by some of this snow falling on my head and much cold. The mountain is closed! It is apparently too windy up there, so no snowboarding for me. I spend the day chilling at the hotel, wasting my time at a shitty restaurant (I was bitter enough yesterday to want to write a scathing review, but now the hate is gone, so I’ll focus on the good stuff).

The good thing on Saturday (among a bunch of ok things), was this random “american bar” I went in to. I passed by it several times on my walk through town (the main street is about 200 meters long). The last time though there was dance music blasting from it, and people dancing inside. This might not seem so weird but consider that it was 7:30 in the evening, the bar was slightly bigger than my living room, and the people dancing were 4 middle-aged welsh guys, a beautiful black bartendress, a teenage girl, a super cute little black 3-year old, and the other bartendress. This was enough to attract me (being the dancing whore that I am). Once inside, the cd got upgraded to straight up house, and the party kicked off. I downed a beer and joined to incredibly excited cheers from the audience.

The dance party went on for about 2.5 hours altogether. I made good friends with the welshmen. They are all cops from a town on south wales and I now have a place to stay there whenever I want (digits!). They spent the better part of the evening getting progressively more pissed, and overjoyed to dance with the bartenders and get a little feel away from home. It was their last day at the end of a week of skiing. Highlights included all of them dancing in the window (and eventually persuading me to do the same). At one point terry (dude in a yankees hat and a t-shirt that says “beauty is in the eye of the beer-holder”), gets up in the windows and takes his pants off. He was clearly going for the full monty but instantly there was a record scratching moment at which everyone was like “too far”.
As it turned out the beauty hailed from Santo Domingo, so she and I actually had a conversation in Spanish. She invited me to come to the disco, and I figured I would join after I bought the last welshman standing a drink (he looked exactly like larry bird, so I felt like I had no choice). Unfortunately the disco turned out to be completely empty, so alas it was not to be. But nonetheless I felt that the experience had entirely validated my trip (it had even aside from the need for rationalization, there was a strong chance the mountain would be closed again the next day).

Despite a sunny/”warm” late afternoon, I woke up to the sound of plows and a snowstorm. The mountain remained closed past the usual 8:30 time, and I began to consider changing my ticket to an earlier bus. Then, miraculously, they opened a few of the lifts. I rented my gear, bundled up, and headed to the gondola and up the mountain.

I will preface this account of my day at the slopes by saying I have only snowboarded 3 times, all of them over the course of last march/april, and all of them at wachusett.

My first challenge was provided by the lift ticket, which was distributed with a long elastic band, different from the stick on things I am used to. All the lifts apparently are equipped with the subway entrance barriers, and you have to insert your ticket to get to go through. Naturally I hung the rather long elastic around my neck, stretched it, and inserted the ticket into the machine. The machine rapidly grabbed the ticket out of my hand, and spit it out with such venom that the elastic snapped back and the ticket hit me squarely between the eyes (despite my later precautions this happened at least one more time). To add insult to injury, while I was nursing my wound, the gate in front of me completed a revolution by itself, and I had to make everyone behind me wait while the attendant let me in with his magic ticket.

The ride up was pretty cool, but because of the snowstorm you couldn’t really see anything. At the end of the gondola ride was the base of the skiing. The lower trails were closed, but here we were above some of the more insidious clouds so it was ok. I decided to warm up on the bunny slope, and was then faced with my second challenge. There was no actual lift, but instead there was a rope with stretchy ropes dangling from it. The end of the rope has a disk, you grab the disk, put it between your legs, and let the rope tow you. Although the approach for skiers seemed clear, the snowboard path seemed entirely non-obvious. To my chagrin I also discovered that I had forgotten every single thing I had learned about snowboarding. So between trying to remember those and to learn the new doohicky, I did expect a certain amount of failure.

I was not disappointed. After about a third of the way up, my board wobbled, my unbound foot fell off, I stumbled, and watched my precious disk sail away to the horizon as I struggled to get out of the way of the oncoming skiiers. “ok, i’ll start with a short warmup”, I thought as I climbed over the pile of snow separating the lift from the trail. As it turned out, it made more sense to take advantage of the warmup slope as much as possible, so I drew out the experience by falling around 73 times. I don’t think there was a point during the descent that could be called snowboarding. I did discover a few important things. The boots I was wearing (and consequently the new boots that were waiting for me at 1580 house) were too big. Without the nice snug fit, I realized I was entering a world of pain. Despite continuous adjustments to the bindings and the laces, I was not disappointed. Moreover in the first five seconds I got extremely hot (3 too many layers).

I took a redbull break after the first run and settled my thoughts. Though I expected some recession in my skills, this was a bit much. I seriosly considered exchanging the boots or calling it a day. Then I called myself a pussy 3 times, and that worked, so I changed clothes and headed back up. the baby lift was easier this time and I made it all the way to the top. And then it all came back to me. I rode down and my body remembered (thank god).

After another bunny slope run I was ready for the first green (they call them blues here), so I got on the big lift and went up. successful dismount (an area of much pass difficulty), and I was on my way. As I was riding down though, I realized everything had become the same shade of white. I could no longer discern any features in the trail, nor where the trail separated from the sky. I really could pick out no distinguishing marks of any sort, and as it turns outbeing able to see is actually useful for snowboarding. Nobody was willing to take my soul for a pair of polarized goggles, so I made do.

I actually made it down without too many problems. The blue was the same level as the greens as wachusett, which was a bit surprising. I was totally unprepared for it, as a result of which there were at least 5 times that I had to unbuckle my right binding, and walk my board over a flat area until I could go down again. I determined this is by far my least favorite part of snowboarding, so I tried to go faster. Then I caught edge for the first time. I got whipped down with the back of my head hitting snow and me biting the slight tip of my tongue. Not bad, in one piece. I finished the trail and upgraded to the red (they call blues reds. Blacks are blacks everywhere though. Broder, eat your heart out).

The rest of the day was super fun. I had a few more runs, little falling, and the only tough moment was when at the end of the last run I caught front edge and slammed head first into the snow. That dazed me quite a bit and I barely finished, but all in all it was still cool. The best part though was that for my last 2.5 runs it stopped snowing, and the sun actually came out. and then I finally saw the alps. My god, they are spectacular. The space is so gigantic and the trails are just a tiny part. the mountain actually sits above most of the clouds. Not only was it amazing to finally see the surrounding view, but I was also riding on a foot of fresh powder, so it all ruled. Sadly I had no camera, and I am finding it difficult to find words to describe the scene adequately. Perhaps it’s better that it remain a surreal memory though, “that time the sun came out and I happened to be on the matterhorn. “

As is necessary after the peak of the experience, I came back and chilled at a russian tea room before finally meeting my new friend autostrasse and enlisting his services. A couple of hours to go and time for me to sleep.

Torino

Relishing my apparently Italian laziness, I will skip my original plan to put these into a coherent narrative, and just list a bunch of things I got to enjoy in my 2 days in Turin, Italy (that's right, suckas, I get to go to Italy for work and the only catch is that I have to stay at the hotel the entire time and not see anything. but at least Italian is spoken on TV in my room).
· Conductor helping me jump onto a moving train following a frustrating though finally successful search for a ticket validation doohicky (it was nice of him)
· Train ride from turin to milan with the mountains flanking one side for most of the journey. How pretty.
· The sonic high-five of two trains passing at full speed
· The Suite 26, an "enormous room" for los italianos and las italianas of all ages, with pounding techno and great 3-person group dynamics (boy and girl making out, girl’s less attractive girlfriend unsuccesfully trying to turn hurt and insecurity into outward boredom)
· The sweet old lady at the food counter in the train station, who was nice enough to think my “accent” was french. I pulled off the order, my first successful italian feat, but was utterly stumped by the conversation that was poised to follow. All I could offer was “Ruso? Espanol?” I keep reverting to spanish as a defense mechanism.
· The pretentious exclusivito club that I stood outside of for a good 20 minutes, completely enthralled by the scene outside, as well as by a secret desire to be deemed special enough to let in without an ugly girl-in-tow covered in makeup or knowing someone at the club (the line was filled with increasingly agitated single guys looking to cajole the diminutive doormen).
· The club I did get into, filled with smoke, and lots of unhappy people dancing. One cute girl in the entire place. Where did all the beautiful women go?
· Beautiful during the day at least. At night they all go to places hidden from uninformed tourists like me.
· Oh and the block of irish pubs. Another sausage festival, but at least one of the pubs had a bunch of stocky italian guys wearing kilts and rugby shirts.
· An awesome walk around turin. The river Po. The Piazzas. The big old building with projected writing scrolling up it. The blueish backlighting all around town, especially in the big piazza. Galileo the fire twirler on via po playing with the celestial spheres in all their electrically-infused glory. The stereotypical italian babushka, hunched over and moving at a brisk block-an-hour pace. The via roma with its made up blue constellations, and thousands of designer garbage shops.
· Drunk dialing my mom, lena, and vanessa from the company cell phone.
· Oversleeping every morning by over 2 hours.
· All that work I keep thinking I will miraculously get done one of these days (1.5 days left). [I basically got it done, though "last minute " would be the euphemism of the century].
· On to milano.

just do it

From Gmail:

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new ipods!
7 messages

amy wilson
To: bernard levin , Ilya , ahren , lynn ambrosino , mair , kells , "jwaful", Leanne Giusti
i'm totally getting the r. kelly one.

http://www.liebography.com/ipod.htm

lynn ambrosino Wed, Dec 15, 2004 at 7:34PM
who the hell is toby keith??
r. kelly=the way to go, obviously.

bernard levin Wed, Dec 15, 2004 at 7:38PM
are you kidding me? toby keith is one of the huge hits of country for
the last many years. writes some scary-level patriotic songs, but
also has a couple songs i dig.
i don't know....the christina ipod is pretty tempting.
brandt can't watch, though, or he has to pay 100.

JWaful Wed, Dec 15, 2004 at 7:46PM
Toby Keith is a red neck idiot. He claims that we should be at war with Iraq because "they" attacked us (brilliant logic). So he took offense at the Dixie Chicks for their comments about George Bush. One of the Chicks then wore a shirt on stage that said "FUTK".
They later played dumb and claimed it stood for "Freedom, Understanding, Truth and Knowledge" with a wink and a nod.
I'm definitely getting that one.

ahren Wed, Dec 15, 2004 at 7:58PM
everytime a "reply all" is sent, an arab islamo-fundamentalist gets his wings...

lynn ambrosino Wed, Dec 15, 2004 at 8:16PM
sweet. another one.

lynn ambrosino Wed, Dec 15, 2004 at 8:16PM
and another.

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ilya says: blogging
ahren says: "bwahahahahahahaaaaaa!!!!"
amy says: i blame waful

burn in hell

People ask me what I think about what's going on in my homeland - and are typically surprised to hear my indifference. yuschenko, yanukovich, street protests and the romantic saga of a proud people (whom no one gave a shit about as recently as a month ago) seeking to throw off their despotic rulers and drown themselves in a pool of joyous freedom. poisonings, the evil hand of that comfortingly familiar enemy, and a microcosm of the west vs. east divide. Well, I didn't become ukrainian (or russian to my more ignant acquaintances) until my arrival to these great states of ours. I used to be jewish, and any good ukrainian knows what to do with the jews.

From Ha'aretz (not precisely an impartial source):
"...Ukraine has a long history of bloody pogroms and persecution of Jews. In 1648, the nationalist forces of Bogdan Chmielnicki [national hero to this day] slaughtered some 100,000 Jews and destroyed around 300 communities. The pogroms recurred in every political and social crisis of the 18th century, in 1734, 1750 and 1768; at the end of 1919-1920 Civil War some 100,000 Jews were murdered; and during World War II the Nazis killed some 600,000 Jews, approximately half of Ukrainian Jewry, with active collaboration on the part of the locals. Survivors returning from Russia after the war were given a hostile welcome by their Ukrainian neighbors, and Kiev remained even after the war a hotbed for anti-Semitic publications..."

and

"...This past September, a series of incidents in Ukraine started: in Lviv, swastikas were drawn on a monument marking the place where a synagogue destroyed by the Nazis had stood, and slogans appeared on city walls calling for the killing of Russians and Jews; the trial of a drunken security agent who broke into a Jewish soup kitchen and attacked workers there has already been postponed three times, and there are some who see this as an indication of the government's anti-Semitic tendencies; in addition, the trial of the editor of the anti-Semitic journal Idealist has been twice postponed; in December, the windows of Kiev's Brodsky Street Synagogue were shattered, the same synagogue where hot meals are distributed and which provided refuge from the severe cold to dozens of Yushchenko supporters protesting against the results of the first round of elections."