from a sweet russian bear
yours in candy coated goodness
so last night me, Di Caprio, Jack Nicholson and Matt Damon hung out at some irish pub on Union street. we drank 2 dollar pints of Miller Light, i was barely aware that it was even beer. the big lcd screens showed the patriots playing football. we weren't bothered, we were just catching up. in the back ground, the rolling stones filled the air waves followed by pink floyd's, 'comfortably numb'. great sound track to a great city. in my back pocket i pulled out a polaroid pic of the gold domed building that sits in the city centre of Baastin. the one that hovers just above the Baastin commons gardens, a real green retreat for a city dweller. i took the pic that day.although it was a little bent, crumpled i showed it to Matt. its the exact domed building Matt has a view of from his apartment. anyways we all went back to Matts apartment and listened to the Beach Boys and Patsy Cline on his quarter of a million dollar Makintosh sound system. it was reverberatingly awesome.
Baastin, apart from one day was awash in rain. while trudging the soaked cobbled streets, i noticed a guy in a wheel chair, his wheels smooth as custard, struggling to wheel himself up a slopey hill. i thought, gsus, i gotta give this oke a hand. 'mate can i give you a push?.'he graciously accepted.so i pushed the ginger(if being in a wheel chair was so bad, G-d went and gave him orange hair and freckles) up the hillock. i felt this rather rewarding and for some reason gave myself credit.
that eve while holding up another irish pub, i was sat by a single empty chair.i offered to shift for a couple from LA-a radio DJ and his Petron-tequila crazed wife. said DJ says to the barmen, 'get this kid a beer, he doesn't allow me a word in edge ways. we get chatting, the night goes on and they move on, but before that,they drop some green backs on the arm pit stained bar, enough for another beer. enjoy the night bud.
washington deecee,
after finding my bearings, which were as round as those chocolate coated peanut M&M's, i made headway for the hostel. now on a map, the distance between things looks kinda small and so i figured id walk the mileage. after sweating like a cotton pickin labourer, being drenched like a dog in a car wash and having noticed quickly that the demographics changed from milky white to cappucino to all black, i realised that i was in the capitals ghetto.welcome to dc
the capitol hill, which offers a free tour, something free in the usa.....oh and slaves, sits at the centre of the city's cartesian grid, the 'centre of the universe', with the rolling green hills of the mall extending, binding that huge column 500 feet high, a pin prick on the bubble blue sky, to forrest gumps reflecting pool to the gargantuan lincoln memorial, its a phenomenally awesome patriotic expression of the nation's ego.
perpendicular to the Mall the white house on its green checkered lawn with the black president sits looking south across the Potomac river. the theme of the Nation, its memory, and memorialisation continues in this vast envelope with the beautiful, engaging Vietnam War Veterans Memorial by Maya Lin-2 black granite walls embedded with the names of fallen heroes cut the earth in the shape of a V, and the statue riddled war scene of the Korean War Memorial.
the museums and art collections that line the Mall are a vast resource of information and history. here they harbour some serious odes to mans endeavours and artistic masterpieces.the holocaust museum, as many as i've been to, always pluck on the fender that is my heart, the aeronautical and space museum was simply a phenomenal walk and visual explosion of man pushing the envelope.
staying in a proper ghetto, when i get on the bus i feel like i'm in a spike lee movie, i never knew there was another million man march.
ah what a day, after waking up sweating like like an olive in a desert,i got myself up early, and made a bolt for the Metropolitan museum of Art. the museum sits on two floors, and i have no idea how many square meters it consumes, but its like a wee megalopolis. anyhow it sounds rather strange but i get kicks out of antiquities, well primarily the greek and roman stuff,afterall i was a latin scholar. here too i rubbed shoulders with the kandinsky's,the cezannes, the monets, the mantes, the van goghs. the list is as big as a new york deli side order menu. huge.
where do you begin to bite this fruit of a city.how do you approach it, how do you pounce? and hence the beginnings started well in the beginning when the world was created and Mcdonalds popped up on every corner.
so the history museum gives one the opportunity to pay whatever you wish, so its normally a hefty 20 dollars, but i had set my mind on 5 bucks.anyhow im in the cheapo queue and some poncy outta stater asks me how much im gonna give, so i tell him a 'fiver'.so he's llke 'whats a faiyver?'.its funny cos his wife got it. anyhow this f*ckin ponce tells me that 'know one in these parts knows what a faiyver is'.anyhow i kept my mouth shut thinking this oke was a total baseball head.
after 5 hours scouring mummies and old mexicans, penguins and dinosaurs ,ancient asians and prehistoric africans, rubbing rocks from space and rocks from the rockies it was time to head out side and take a sweet stroll through central park. there i cracked open the all too cool can of dr pepper and unbagged a stash of pretzels. im an all american.
having asked for local knowledge on a fine slice of pizza pie, this college kid leads us to Freddies, a little dive entered below street level run by these like porta ricans. a real sweaty place only cooled when the coke refrigerator was opened. that lil triangulated wedge of ecstacy was the sweatiest tastiest slice of life i've had in a long time. i knew this was the place cos here on the wall i shared a moment, another(after wall street) moment with michael douglas and the great Sopranos.ssssiiiick.seems like michael douglas spreads himself thin.
after catching a cab, a frikkin yellow cab, typically driven by some guy from new delhi we rolled into Brandys across town on the east side (got the lingo down hey).its a wee piano bar, open mic night it was and gees like it was awesome.
sweet melons what a night, it ended in miss waitress singing a lady gaga tribute, i want your 'vertical stick'.
as we arrived, i sessioned a car bar of green heneikens, cos i knew, yes i did that mister Shwet Splatter (sepp blatter), would rape and pillage my pocket like the meat eating vikings to some unsuspecting vegetarian tribe out in the andes.
the poms loud and berry red, shirtless in the icey cold, decked in liquor jackets ,the red cross of saint georges pasted across their chests had arrived to make haggis out of american body parts. i wouldnt run to these okes if i needed a band aid.
entering a big stadium is always dramatic. you rise up the stairs looking out towards the landscape, then make a turn into the tunnel beneath the seats, the tunnel is dark but for the light at the end of it, a window, or a snap shot of whats taking place opens up to reveal artificial bright light and a heaving crowd, music over the PA and raucous excitement.its simply wow and a feeling that never dies. i sat alone, well with out any one i knew, but i found myself in and amongst the beer swilling, flag waving ginger americans. they were an animated bunch, they sang great footy songs, waved a flag i couldnt believe id be seeing in our home country, ate sweaty boerierolls and said things like 'caar' and 'yaeh'. it was an absolute gas.
japan was a foreign movie and there were no subtitles to decipher what the hell was going on. i never handled a knife or fork for 2 weeks, never slept more than 2 feet off the ground, never ate anything harder than a jelly baby and never spoke more than 2 words of grade two english. trying to harpoon my food with a wooden spear was a game i struggled with. trying sign language without giving the middle finger was hard, real hard.before japan, the most japanese characters id seen was on some over sized bird on the beach in cape town before the war. my vocabulary extended from konichiwa to bruce lee. short and concise like the oxford dictionary. Going to the bog left me with 2 choices, the squatter or the contraption that was straight outta Robotech with fully functioning seat warmer, fountain spray and blow dry. It was a no brainer
thirst quenching, moist to my dry mouth, washing away the desert that is joburg. i unloaded my back pack in a wee 5 storey, jammed between two buildings.i nearly didnt see it. the door to my room smaller than me but larger than a hobbits.a pair of blue granny styled slippers sat neatly p
eets are a book stack with spines jammed, and fudged into place-it'd be a right royal task to squeeze your finger between two buildings. as my eyes caressed the stores, the shops, and the bars,the labels emblazoned upon the spines emerged as pure design pure excitement, pure eclecticism.
y eyeballs like a township kid with a tire and two sticks, i stubbed my toe on Americamura Americamura, its a shaken bottle of coca cola waiting to be uncapped. it's osakas camden town, wet streets, throbbing stores, outrageous clothing, girls in teeny red tartan, white buttoned shirts and sculpted, caressed moulded hair. guys in stove pipes, elvin path beaters and Thriller jackets, hair architecturally cut, grafted and set. a wave of design, an insight into the future.if you wanna see the edge cut, bleed americamura.
knew id hate. I let my camera lensbe my eyeballs as I looked down upon my sneakers.back on earth, my pits a sweaty coalmine and my back drenched like in hollywood movies. my knees trembling, i found a bench, i cried into my
gging a burst of pink salmon, itching, crying for a salty gush of soy and a nose tingling whip of algae green wasabi. I sat upon the bench, as ungenteel as mr miyagi and handling the sticks like a claw handed invalid, I stabbed, drowned and crushed the sushi between my teeth. It was nice, real nice
nces, a buddha or two, red lanterns and timber flops. theyre the meat between the high risers. Kyoto is a bellowing city, it’s an outdoor museum tracing japan's history centuries back. Here I could caress the long gone past of a mighty nation.my hands were calloused. i set my eyeballs on a gold clad temple perched in the middle of a lake, it was indeed a treat, but the experience was a henry ford production
line. i got my photo, you bet ya. I needed silence, contemplation time. I needed to wrest my wary feet from the call of the lengthy tarmac. i made a meal of a day and went to visit tadao ando's Asahi art gallery, there was no beer but Monets lillies. the concrete gallery sits upon a hilltop within a range of mountains, barry peppered by maple trees squeezing hard, turning red in the autumnal breeze, bamboo forests, vertical, the shoots thick and tall-a chinese torturers dream, khoi ponds and bonsai trees.this day was a welcome retreat and a piece of architecture i kinda said, 'oh well' to. 
tourists flashing lights and constant movement, i was beaten into submission. i needed quiet time, time off the beaten tarmac. i rapidly made tracks for
minal it was a quieter retreat from the tourist mad frenzy that kyoto is. my
hole.i was in a horror movie and i wasnt loving it. apart from that, yokohama was rather tasty. i made a blazing trail for the Terminal. a port designed by Foreign office Architects. a piece of urban landscaping fullly functional for sea traffic. a place of leisure and contemplation- lovers licking ice creams, couples getting married, picnics on the grassy knoll and strollers strolling.ah the sea breeze and blue skies. It was a total retreat from the last three cities i'd licked.