The (Mis)Adventures of Matt Lyon

Malaysia and Borneo, Southern Thai Isles

2010-04-12T02:30:00.000-07:00

bSo the trip to Kuala Lumpur was a bit longer than expected. 4 hour ferry to the mainland. 1 hour overcrowded bus ride the the transport hub. 4 hour wait for the connecting bus. When it shows up, there are 7 seats too few and since its supposed to be an overnight bus, we protest and after an hour on the side of the road the driver arranges for a minivan to transport the spillover. We drive at a snail's pace and after 5 hours arrive at Hat Yai around 8PM. At this point, the bus driver forgets all his English leaves 40 travelers at a hotel, waving. Long story short, all of us arrange for a bus to pick us up in the morning to take us across the border and to Kuala Lumpur. Staying in a hotel instead of the bus was fine with as we had added in 2 days buffer before our flight to Borneo but others weren't as far-sighted and had planes to catch the next day. Lots of screaming and yelling. Another 10 or so hours of travel the next day landed us in KL around 8PM the next night. We stayed in a hostel with no windows in Chinatown. The manager had a pet monkey. Mildly entertaining. Mostly saddening. We spent 2 days wandering KL, but generally ended up at the Petronas Towers, once the tallest buildings in the world, wandering the pristine mall and taking in a midnight showing of Avatar 3D. On January 6th we boarded a plane for Sandakan, Borneo. About 20 minutes into the flight, the captain comes on and tells us there's been a problem and we have to return to KL. We were supposed to circle for 20 minutes to burn fuel. 2 hours later we were still circling and Meghan had worst-case scenarios worked up in her head. Thankfully we landed safely, but with no explanation as to why we circled so long or what the problem really was. Everyone deplaned and boarded a new plane. Meghan was having none of it. After about 90 minutes of going back and forth we decided we would try again in two days. So we went back to KL, got a nicer hotel room and spoiled ourselves with Italian dinners and movies. Dr. Parnassus. Could've been so much better. Two days later we successfully made it to Sandakan. We passed the taxis offering rides into town for $8 and got the bus for 50 cents. A small triumph against overcharging travelers. Sandakan was nice but not great. It allowed us to get our feet wet in Borneo and we arranged a trip into the jungle. We arrived to Bukit on the Kinabatangan River in Sabah and spent 3 days on river and jungle treks, searching for Orangutans, Probiscis Monkeys, Elephants, Kingfishers, Hornbills, Crocodiles, among others. It was really great, although the Palm Oil trees sometimes came right up to the riverbanks. Its really sad. A lot of Malaysia Borneo has been sold out to foreign Palm Oil companies and enormous swaths of land have been bulldozed to make way for Palm trees. Along with the trees go the ecosystem and habitat of countless species. No doubt many many animal and plant species were made extinct because of this. It is a total disgrace and we all use palm oil without ever really knowing it. Like so many things in this world, the products we use tend to have a significant effect on the environment and of course the corporations are none too happy to publicize these inconvenient truths. Unilever, for example, makes everything from peanut butter to shampoo, all with the help of palm oil. It is a real shame. (Step off soap box.)

After Kinabatangan, we took a bus to Semporna, the eastern tip of Malaysian Borneo and gateway to SCUBA paradise. A night at the Dragon Inn, a 'floating' hotel and a scramble to find a dive shop we liked landed us in the worthy hands of Sue Keevil, a lovable Brit. She sorted us out and the next morning we were on a boat headed to the island of Mabul. On the way we got to see Semporna from the water. I like to call it the 'Venice of the East'. Row after row, canal after canal of stilted houses and hovels. An amazing way to live. We arrived to our homestay on Mabul and spent a total 8 days diving and drinking, drinking and diving. Funnily enough, a kid we met at the airport in San Pedro Sula Honduras last year showed up as our divemaster on Mabul. We shared a bus to the coast and had dinner together, then parted ways the next morning. He's our motherloving dive instructor in fathercuddling Borneo. Small world once more. The island is a meditation on balance between the rich and the poor. A smattering of dive shops on stilts and inland, villagers just living. You can walk around the whole island in about an hour. There was a resort on the other side, a literal stone's throw from shacks. The unluckiest on the island weren't even on the island at all. "Sea gypsies". Filipino refugees living on boats, 'docking' at low tide. When it rained, vigilance was needed day and night to bucket out the water. They fish and cook on the boat. Pretty wild stuff. Anyway, we had an amazing time diving unbelievable sites. Among the strangest encounters were ornate ghost pipefish, lionfish, cuttlefish, parrotfish, frogfish, stonefish, reef sharks, nudibranchs. Google any of these and be prepared for a wild ride into Mother Nature's mad laboratory. Just downright weird, most of them. We got our Advanced Open Water certification. We did a night dive, got into some pitch black bizarro realms. The mind is a funny thing, likes to make something out of nothing. A fun little trick is waving your hand in front of you and seeing it light up with phosphorous. I loved it. The wreck dive was also a trip, looking for pieces of eight on the fingers of skeletons. Not exactly, but surreal nonetheless. Seeing the wreck appear out of the blue with thousands of fish all moving in synchronicity was a nice little mindscrew. I love diving. Love it. We did 3 dives at the famed Sipadan, the place Jacques Cousteau described, “I have seen other places like Sipadan… 45 years ago. Now we have found again an untouched piece of art.” He was right. An island in the middle of the Celebes Sea, with a towering coral wall that is just teeming with sea life. Anything and everything can be seen there. It is fantastic. I highly recommend you go. Now. I'll wait.

We had to bid a found farewell to all of our new friends and our new home and set sail for Kota Kinabalu. Kota Kinabalu is the biggest city in Sabah, but was a bit of a disappointment. Meghan got a viral infection and was bedridden for about a week. So our time was spent laying around watching movies and surfing the interweb. I caught the Saints Vikings game on ESPN dot com. Just the gameday play by play, which had my jumping up and down at every update. That was really the highlight of the week to be honest. We saw the hospital. That was neat.

So we flew back to Kuala Lumpur and went straight to the bus station and caught a night bus back to Hat Yai Thailand. Goodbye Muslim America, hello Land of Smiles (for the 3rd time). That morning we spent an hour eating breakfast and then hopped a van to Krabi. Got to the pier in mid afternoon, put our stuff on a longtail boat and made the 20 minute ride to TonSai. Oh what a delight! Clear Turquoise water with jutting rock formations and white sand beaches. Our new Argentine friends found a couple of bungalows 50 feet off the beach for $12 a night. It's yet another paradise. Rock climbers come the world over to this beach. Imagine climbing up a rock wall 90 feet up then looking out to the most beautiful beach with limestone formations offshore at sunset. Guess its hard to imagine. SUCKERS! I kid, I kid! It was amazing, though. I highly recommend it this also.

A couple days after we arrived, Meghan's friend Colin came with his man friend Dave. They stayed at Rayvadee Resort. $800/night. Amazing. But still not worth the $784 difference. The pool was amazing though. Looked right over the beach. It was nice having him there because it gave us an excuse to go out, which we have rarely done on this trip. It was a good place to do it. We found this place called Small World tucked into the forest. Had cheapish drinks and firedancing tightrope walkers. I kid you not. It was just about the coolest thing I've ever seen. I have a video that will be on facebook once I return. Our time on Krabi was great. One day we went kayaking, one day went rock climbing, one day went caving and hiking. Then it was on to Koh Phi Phi. I wasn't too happy about this, as I've heard its just a built up tourist trap. It is. But I had no choice as it was Dave and Colin's choice. I forced myself to have fun and drink buckets of booze and party all night on the beach and fire jump rope, and fire limbo, and jump through a ring of fire. It was hell. Gosh I am a spoiled little shit. Brian and Emily from Madison joined us in Phi Phi as well. They are teaching English in Korea and jumped ship without papers to be with us. I jump roped with Brian. It was bromantic.

We said goodbye to Dave and Colin, who headed to Phuket while we took an overnight bus to Bangkok. We had to connect in the same hub where we waited for 4 hours for the connection. This time it was 20 minutes. Matty likey. Bangkok Khao San once more, but this time just for 4 hours. Jumped online then headed to the local bus station for bus to the border to Cambodia. At the border the tourist police tried to rip us off. Yay, Cambodia!!!

We hired a taxi to take us the 1 1/2 hours to Siem Reap, home of Angkor Wat!!!!!

Going up the Mekong the Slow Way, Living Fast on the Island

2010-04-11T23:45:00.000-07:00

Luang Prabang was generally nice. Very relaxing days with a nice hotel room in a place called SokDee (Good Luck). Great Mekong sunsets and mellow night market ramblings. Our friend Karen got food poisoning without our knowledge. Andrea had to take her to the hospital. While in the emergency room, she was with a bunch of bus crash victims. Nothing too serious from what I hear, but they kept coming up to her and asking for money. She kind of shrugged them off, as you regrettably have to do too often over here. You can't help everyone. But then she realized these people were going straight to the pharmacy to buy medicine. A couple things about communism in poor countries: All the social securities we associate with communism/socialism ie education, healthcare, food stamps tend to be nonexistent. If you are sick in Laos, your family has to kitty up the money for your care. If you are imprisoned in Laos, your family has to come feed you. Or you starve/eek out a living trading anything you have of value to inmates with fat families. Another thing that just occurred to me: Lots of American contemporary Country songs praise working hard for its own sake. Lots of Communist countries praise working hard for its own sake. Yet the two groups seem to be diametrically opposed. Just goes to show not much is what it seems.

But thankfully, Karen fully recovered in Luang Prabang while Meghan, Andrea, and I got a slow boat up the Mekong for a 2 day travel excursion. A slow boat is basically a long wooden boat maybe 50 feet long with a huge monster of a diesel engine. It is covered, yet is open air. It has wooden seats, but some have old car seats nailed down for the first class passengers. It sells beer. So we load up, maybe 10 westerners and 10 Lao and slowly head up the river. We immediately become surrounded by beauty. Huge rock formations, sandy beaches, tiny villages tucked into the mountains, people fishing, swimming, bathing, and playing on the banks. Locals got on with handfuls of food or a basket full of chickens, or a wall fan, would stay on for a few hours and the boat would stop on the bank, and they'd get off and be greeted by their family, and you realize that this person probably traveled at least 2 days to bring what they had in their hands back to their family. It may seem like a poor life, but it is only seemingly so! They aren't tied down by mortgages and credit card debt and car notes and bratty kids who just threw their iPhone on the floor and are demanding another one. None of that Western shit applies here, and I am sure they are exponentially more wealthy spiritually and familially without all that Prozac and Valium and Ritalin that we consume to help us just get by. One thing I've learned over here is that you are only poor if someone tells you so. With movies and television and cell phones, people in the city know they are 'poor' compared to the West, and it is a shame because you see the wanting, the envy. But in the country, people seem to be so content with what they have. They are never in a hurry to go anywhere, will spend hours cooking dinner, and can meet with a friend at any hour, at the drop of a hat. That doesn't sound like poverty, that sounds like what all the working folks in the west are working for. Just a little chicken soup while we work in our little ticky tacky cubicles.

So we spent the night in Pak Beng, the village that just so happened to be halfway between Luang Prabang and the Thai border. We went out with Andrea and and a man from Germany-can't remember his name just now, and James, a bloke from where they call guys 'blokes'. A great dinner and conversations ranging from drugs in England to real poverty in Cambodia to...wait for it...American politics. Drank a little too much beerlao at the encouragement of Andrea, the not-so-closet lush of the group, and went to sleep in the upstairs of a family's house with my head spinning and my mind still floating downriver.

The next morning whilst boarding, I confirmed my suspicion that a couple travelers on the boat were indeed speaking Czech. I had a brief broken language conversation with them and bid them a hezky den. Another glorious day on the boat playing cards, reading, pondering, waving to naked children playing riverside, and generally loving life. That evening I invited the Czechs to dinner. Lo and behold, Ondrej works at Commerzbank, my old teaching ground in Prague! It dawned on me that I had seen him wandering the halls of the IT department and here he is on the Mekong in Laos! Small world! Really nice to brush the rust off of my Czech and get excited about the possibility of stopping there 'on the way' home.

And so it was time for us to hire a tiny shuttle boat across the river. Goodbye Land of a Thousand Elephants, hello Land of Smiles. This time we made a beeline to Bangkok and before I knew it I was back on the dreaded Khao San Road at 4am. Khao San embodies all the culturally bad things about backpackers in SE Asia. There are English pubs, McDonald's, KFCs, Burger Kings, 7-11s, t shirt touts, tuk tuk drivers, women in faux hilltribe garb selling wooden croaking frogs, and Thai hookers. I guess its not all bad. It would even be pretty fun if it was Bourbon Street or if you flew all the way to Bangkok just to party. But arriving after an overnight bus is walking into a world of depravity without the lubrication of alcohol to lessen the blow. But thankfully we had an out this time. Al NaChiangmai is back from living in Chicago and was more than happy to show us around. The next night he and his friend drove us around in her Mercedes and gave us a tour of the Old Town. We ate at an outdoor restaurant and then went to a Jazz club called Brown Sugar. A great night with great friends. We met Al a few more times to go shopping, play pool with his dad, and drink and talk about Thai and American politics and his culture shock after living in America for college.

After a few days in Bangkok it was time for us to head south to the southern island of Koh Pha Ngan, home of the world famous Full Moon Party. Another overnight boat and a sunrise ferry had us on the island by mid-morning. A nice little bungalow on the northwest side of the island 100 feet from the beach. Perfect. We spent Christmas and New Year's there, 10 nights in all. It was really nice to 'settle in' and not have to pack and unpack and repeat. Our days were spent reading on the waveless beach and our nights were spent enjoying great Thai food at slightly steeper prices. For Christmas and New Year's Eve we went to the parties. Christmas was a nice warm up to the real thing a week later. Here's the gist: Huge soundsystems pump out mediocre electronic music. Fire dancers. Black light body painters. Clubs selling weed and mushroom shakes. Endless homemade bars line the top of the beach selling Thai whiskey and coke buckets for $5. Think a child's sand pale filled with 2 pints of whiskey or vodka and your mixer of choice. Plus about 10 straws in case you are 10 girls who enjoy letting perfect strangers take pictures of you all drinking at the same time and the fellatio innuendo therein. But it is fun enough. I got hit in the back of the head with a flying 24 oz beer bottle.

The next week is a bit of a blur. We woke up, ate homemade sandwiches and laid at the beach. Period. The NYE party was a bit different from the Christmas one. Firstly, this was a true full moon party. It was also a blue moon party, meaning two full moons in the same month by some definitions. It was also New Year's Eve. Whereas Christmas had maybe 5,000 people on the beach, NYE had upwards of 30,000 people on the same beach. The music was better, the bonfires were bigger, the people more energized, and the party lasted much longer. The downside: waves of shards of beer bottles were cutting everybody's feet. In short there were lots of nice and fucked up people doing lots of nice and fucked up things. Meghan literally dragged me away from the jungle soundsystem at sunrise. I lost my shoes.

On the ride home a car passing us ran over a dog. The image melted into my brain. Meghan looked horrified. We got back around 8 am and I laid in the hammock on the porch listening to the Grateful Dead coaxing my mind down from its overloaded night. I marveled in the fact that, while it was 8am in Thailand, it was 8pm in Atlanta and Miami, and the festivities were just underway at the Panic and Phish shows. I wanted to stay up another 12 hours just to be conscious while my friends were throwing down. A homesick morning to be sure.

A sidenote: Its funny how what we read affects our perceptions. Meghan was reading Obama's autobiography at the time and he was scolding fellow revelers all night about how irresponsible and juvenile they were being. I was reading The Right Stuff and first man in space Al Shepard was judging who amongst us had it and who didn't. Obama scoffed at my hedonism while Al saw plainly that Meghan was completely devoid of that righteous stuff.

We woke up New Year's afternoon to the dive shop owner up the road asking if we wanted to dive the next day. Dazed and confused, we gathered our wits and decided, yes, we would dive in the morning. We loaded onto a huge diver's yacht with about 20 other divers and headed to Sail Rock, a dive site between Pha Ngan and Tao with a towering rock shooting up out of the water 30 meters and down into the water a few hundred meters. It was Meghan's and my first dive in a year and our divemaster jumped in and said "Going down!" With waves lapping and boats crashing around us, we both wondered if we had remembered anything about diving. As we released the air out of our BCDs and went under we both had a mild panic attacks and had to shoot to the surface. Shit, can we do this? We both comforted each other and took a big mental breath and went under. It took several good breaths and a lot of mental hula hoops to realize that we would be under water for the better part of an hour. But after the jitters wore off, it was two great dives. Fish from all over come to this rock to feed and it was hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of fish surrounding us. A strange surreal experience that quickly shook off my hangover and left me beaming.

After ten days of doing nothing slowly and everything quickly, it was time for us to head to Malaysia.

Laos, continued.

2010-03-06T02:28:00.000-08:00

Some of the best rock climbing I've done, which honestly isn't saying much since I haven't climbed since I was a teenager, was done in Vang Vieng. But other more seasoned climbers agreed, so there. We enjoyed our day and each others' company so much that we continued the socializing over dinner. There were 6 of us: Meghan and I, James-a native of Singapore, a transplant to Sydney, Andrea-a bleeding heart from Melbourne, Karen-a musician from France, and Andy-a 12 year-old 30 year-old from the Bay Area. We went to the Organic Farm Restaurant. Meghan and I had gone to the Mulberry Farm early in the week looking to help out for a few days, but they wanted us to either build mud huts (which we had done just recently and had reached the zenith of the learning curve) or tend the for-charity mojito bar. Neither sounded too seductive, so we opted to drink their mulberry shakes instead. Yum! Anyway, we found the shakes and lunch so appetizing that we decided to indulge in their in-'town' restaurant. It was a joyous occassion with laughing, comradery, American foreign policy (a necessary inter-citizen discussion), music, travel, and above all, ways to save the world. Conclusion: Inconclusive. But we left with two new friends who would follow us to our next stop in Luang Prabang.

Luang Prabang is an Old Capital. Old like 698 AD old. Most recently it has been the seat of the Lao and Khmer kingdoms as well as the cute little figurehead state that the Colonial French deemed it, but it doesn't really feel Royal. It feels like a sleepy French Alpine ski town in the summer. It is hugged by two rivers--one being the Mekong, has nearby mountains with impressive natural wonders, and superb Buddhist Temples. The town itself can be explored in less than two days. It has two main streets, one following the river lined with cafes, and the other a few blocks parallel with restaurants, shops, travel agencies, temples, and museums. The street transforms at night into the best night market in all of Southeast Asia. Great quality, great price, and very little hassle. The food market is superb as well. Fresh fish grilled and served whole, fresh veggies, crab cakes, pastries, just about anything. (Un)Fortunately, I have become a vegetarian on this trip. It was an ethical dilemma I've been struggling with for years, going meatless for weeks at a time until a restaurant could offer me only 'salad'. But my time at the Buddhist farm strengthened my resolve and I decided to give it a real go. Its been 4 months and its great. Don't think about it most days. But the night food stalls always force me to rewatch animals being slaughtered on youtube to keep me on track. Damn the food over here is good. Even vegetarians have it good, though, and we found a veg stall with an all-you-can-eat buffet of 20 dishes for 60 cents. Can't complain! And the world travelers you meet at veg eateries are superior in every way to those at KFC.

Back to L.P. One day, we took a boat across the river and walked through a couple villages and temples. Another cave temple was on tap as well as one that whose restoration was sponsored by Americans. Yay! At one abandoned temple on a hill, we met some local kids. I'm not sure if they met us. They were sitting on the temple steps huffing rubber cement. One walked over and offered us the bag full of glue, and we both laid back and rode the snake for about 3 hours, chasing the white spots in our vision and relishing in the numbness of our now painless existence. Just kidding. I kinda laughed "No thank you", and realized a few moments later that kids are the same everywhere, but where most westerners say they get high out of boredom or to escape reality, kids over here and many places in the world really do have nothing else to do. No school, no supervision, no job prospects, no joie de vivre other than numbly exploring their consciousness. As we left them up there on the temple hill, getting high, I felt a profound sadness wipe over me that has waxed and waned on this trip, but has never left. It is the sadness of knowing that there is, and probably always will be, unspeakable poverty and suffering in this world, and that the rich world is complicit to its presence. It is a guilt that we all share, whether having seen it or not, one that will linger in our psyche as a species throughout our existence.

Back on the other side of the river, we climbed Phu Si Hill. It overlooks the city and gives a nice view of the area. We bought a caged bird and halfway up, we released it. These women somehow catch birds and put them in thatch cages to sell to tourists and pilgrims. The idea is that your freeing the bird is a noble act and you gain good luck in return. Here's a thought: Don't cage birds to begin with! We normally don't bother with hawkers, but give in occasionally. And the bird had nothing to do with this ridiculous karmic trick, so we bought a caged bird and freed it. It was pretty.

At the top, we ran into Karen and agreed to meet her and Andrea for a beer at sunset on the high banks of the Mekong. Just fantastic. 75 cent 24 oz beers with the sun setting on slow boats unloading oranges on the docks. One for the memory bank. See if it accrues interest.

The next day Meghan and I rode bikes the 20 kilometers to a waterfall. Meghan was none-too-pleased with the uphills, but I was in biking heaven. We arrived, ate our picnic lunch, and bypassed the small crowd to hike up stream. These waterfalls are only 10 feet high, but they cascade into pools and rush down again. About 6 levels in all. I climbed all the way up and jumped all the way down. We were totally alone and it was yet another pure child-like exuberant experience. I love Laos.

Vientiane and Vang Vieng

2010-02-20T02:41:00.000-08:00

Thailand was a blast, but we must leave it for now and head for Laos. The overnight trip was a bust. Minivan 12 deep and mostly asshole Australians. This might be a good time to speak about the different backpackers in Southeast Asia. They are divided not necessarily evenly into 4 groups:

1) Piece of shit Aussies traveling from party town to party town, making a mockery of them and all places in between.

2)Piece of shit Brits traveling from party town to party town, making a mockery of them and all places in between.

3)Liberal people/animal/treehuggers intent on learning as much about the countries, cultures, and environments they tread lightly upon.

4)French people.

Meghan and I would identify most closely with Group 3, but must woefully come in contact with the other groups and cringe acrimoniously when locals assume we are part of Groups 1 or 2.

Anyway, we had to spend a dreadful night with Group 1 on the bus to Laos. Loud, rude, and drunk, they made me ashamed to speak English. But, as their description suggests, they skipped Vientiane (read: cultural capital) and headed straight for Vang Vieng (read: mountainous paradise ruined by an onslaught of Groups 1 and 2). So we had a few days respite.

Vientiane is a lovely, small capital. Everything is within walking distance and was clean, safe, and wonderful. Days were spent wandering the French colonial streets in search of cultural enlightenment and nights were spent indulging in $2 all-you-can-eat Indian food or noodles and beer and cards on the Mekong. A nice intro to Laos.

Next was the inevitable stop Vang Vieng. Vang Vieng is nestled in limestone hills, but it is more of an area instead of a town. The 'town' is littered with shabbily-built restaurants, bars, and travel agencies catering to 'Friends' fanatics and perennial spring breaker types. "It's Spring Break somwhere!" It left me with a knot in my stomach to see so many toilsome Lao slaving for a bunch spoiled Western brats whose main objective was to get as wasted as possible (weed and mushroom shakes abound), write "I love Cock" on their bodies (equally distributed between the sexes), tube down the river blaring MGMT next to locals doing laundry riverside, swing wildly in all directions off of precarious ropes and zip lines, and try to take each other home at the end of the night. The only saving grace was the country-wide curfew of midnight. Maybe I'm getting old, but stay in Australia and do that shit. Don't bring the worst of Western culture here.

It felt like a Wild West enclave. A place where nearly anything goes, a Kafka-esque hellscape, a place where locals are little more than indentured servants, where the exchange rates ensure that foreigners will always have the upper hand. Where, no matter how much Kip you earn, you'll never be able to convert it to anything significant in dollars, enslaving you in the cruel game of worldwide currency, making $2 a day serving those who have a seemingly endless Kip supply that they waste on sheer hedonism--scoffing at the impoverished beggars along the way.

Thankfully Meghan recognized this as well, and we tried not to participate. We found a bungalow across the river in the mountains and spent our days in the glorious pursuit of nature. Kayaking, navigating an underground river, spelunking, hiking, bike riding, and rock climbing. We did spend one day tubing, and had it been in the States, it would have been a blast. Rope swings, music, flesh and drugs galore, and $5 buckets full of alcohol. But here. Here, it was an affront on all things decent. A place where, just 35 years before, the US was indiscriminately bombing the people back to the Stone Age. Frivolity with that kind of history and current poverty I cannot tolerate.

Are you still reading? I'm surprised. Despite all of this, Vang Vieng has a lot to offer. But instead of holding your nose, as some guidebooks suggest, you need to blindfold yourself as well. But the people are amazing, the scenery is stunning, and the activities are top notch. I spent a day biking through the country-side exploring wondrous caves along the way. Cave shrines are a big thing here. And its wonderful. To see either deteriorating or well-maintained Buddhas far away from the sun's suspicious eye is a marvelous experience, conjuring up images of midnight meditations and clandestine rituals. All the caves were deserted, or nearly so, further enhancing the experience and the risk had I misstepped.

Meghan and I went rock climbing one day, and had a great time. The routes were quite challenging and we met some great people. Two, particularly Andrea (Australia) and Karen (France) would be with us in Luang Prabang.

Second Home and Pai

2010-02-12T03:25:00.000-08:00

Meghan and I left Chiang Mai and got on a local yellow truck for a 4 hour drive through the northern Thai Hills, stopping in Samoeng and finally Pang Term. We walked across a bamboo bridge and through a few rice patties to reach Second Home, our home for the next 10 days. It was lovely. We met wonderful people from Thailand, Brazil, South Africa, Quebec, and Switzerland.

The rules:

1) Breakfast at 7:45AM.
2) Organic Vegetarian food only.
3) Work if you desire, desire your work.
4) Cook what you want, eat what you cook.
5) Respect all living beings as sacred.
6) Group meditation at 7:30PM.
7) The Eightfold Path is your guide.
8) Above all, follow your bliss.

And it was fabulous. We weeded the crops, planted new ones, and built a clay herb garden.

In between work, we laid in hammocks, conversed in philosophy, practiced walking meditation and mindfulness, read, ate, and played with the dogs.

We walked to a neighboring village and passed out used shoes. Amazing the reception we got. Some of the happiest people I'd encountered up to that point, and that was just the welcome we received before we displayed our 'gifts'.

After meditations at night, I was the most tranquil I think I've ever naturally been. Calm and quiet. Slow movements. Silent walks into the field to lie down and ponder the infinite stars, the most of which I think I've ever seen. Contemplative DVDs, watching "The Power of Now with Eckhart Tolle"--highly recommended.

A marvelous 10 nights, which sadly, had to come to an end. Meghan and I said goodbye to the farm, which had truly become our second home, and caught a 6am yellow truck to Samoeng.

We got dropped off in Samoeng with a 2 hour wait for the truck headed to Pai, a once-sleepy hippie mountain village, now a staple stop along the backpacker tract. After a tortuous and tormentingly bumpy 5 hour ride, we stopped. Pai? Doesn't look like what we envisioned. The driver got out and pointed to the wat (temple) across the road. "You sleep. Tomorrow Pai". But its 3 in the afternoon! We want to go to Pai today! "Pai no. Watchan. You sleep." And then he hurried us out of the back of his pickup and took off. Great.

We looked around and found about a dozen or so villagers all staring at us. The guys drinking beer and smoking. The women running the shop. People on bikes stared at us as they passed. Even the dogs were drawn to us. Thankfully, we had been in Thailand long enough to not worry. Thai people are wonderful, and I felt totally safe. It was more of,0" wow, this is the most excitement/white people this village has seen in a while."

The villagers managed to track down an ex-Monk named Oxy who learned English in the monastery as well as working as a restaurant worker in Pai--which we learned was 70 kilometers away. So much for hiking or thumbing it. He was able to arrange a room for us behind the shop where we were dropped off. We walked through the shop, out the back, past the bathing grandparents, suckling puppies, and various farm animals, and up to the second floor of the backhouse. This was obviously where the large extended family stayed. We were offered a mattress on the floor, a pillow, and a lock on the door. This was all a step up from our accommodation at second home, which was an adobe shack with leaves for a roof.

After we settled in, Oxy took us for a tour of the village. They got electricity 10 years ago, we learned. We were introduced to his grandfather, who was weaving his umpteenth basket. He spit a mouthful of blood and smiled a red, toothless smile. I thought it was a great and inspiring thing to see an aging man accepting his lot and still working, staying active. Meghan was a bit freaked out.

Oxy took us to see a pig that was being caged. He told us it was awaiting slaughter once western medicine forsook one of the villagers, as it inevitably does. A sacrifice, to the village spirit. This perplexed me, as he said he had been a Buddhist monk. I had read about laypeople practicing Buddhism and Animism hand-in-hand without seeing any contradiction, but a monk, I thought, would be more disciplined in purer Buddhist teachings. "To the village spirit?" I asked. "Yes of course," was his reply. "Everything around us has a different spirit, and we must sacrifice to them and keep them happy. Even the electricity has a spirit." I did not inquire further.

Once the wonderful and humbling tour was over, we had dinner with Oxy and his friends. We bought everyone a round a beer and tried to play cards. It became a mix of a few games but achieved its purpose of making us laugh and breaking down the language barrier.

The next morning, we hopped the yellow truck to Pai, arriving by 11am. We found a riverside bungalow, complete with bathroom, for 6 bucks. We went out, had some lunch, and hit up the much-needed internet.

Pai is a town more by word of mouth than in its own right. It was once a sleepy village, but somehow hippie backpackers latched onto its lazy riverside appeal and its intentional isolation (the town matter-of-factly boasts that it is 762 mountainous curves from Chiang Mai). And while it is a beautiful town situated in the pristine northern Thai hillsides, it has little to attract Thais other than the opportunity to rub elbows with Westerners. The nightlife is first rate, though, and Meghan and I were happy to get sauced after 2 weeks of living the straightedge lifestyle.

One day, we rented motorbikes--Meghan's first experience was markedly better than mine--and went careening into the countryside. We went to Pai Canyon, which is a strange natural formation of reddish clay that made a puzzling maze of two-foot wide walkways with 100 foot dropoffs. I forced her to walk much farther than her comfort allowed and I loved seeing her squirm, especially when two retired ladies passed us along the way.

We also visited a WWII Memorial bridge as well as a few waterfalls. But the best part of the day was just cruising the countryside, passing elephants and flowered trees, letting the wind wash over us, and seeing Meghan smile from ear to ear. It was great.

Pai was too short, too sweet and Meghan and I headed back to Chiang Mai for just one night before heading to Laos!

Chiang Mai

2010-01-26T20:02:00.000-08:00

So after the overnight train to Chiang Mai, we checked into our swank $10/night hotel with AC, hot water, and BBC and CNN Intl. Just in time for nonstop coverage of the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down and....wait for it...domestic terrorism! Hurray! Ugh, what I nightmare in Ft Hood, eh?

Anyway, we decided to go north to Chiang at the time we did to participate in the Loi Krathong Festival. The quick rundown of the festival is: We all have bad emotions that manifest themselves inside of us as demons. These demons need to be let out, but only inspecific ways or else it will be bad for us and everybody else. (See:Sarah Palin) Apparently demons abhor pretty flowers wrapped in incensed banana leaves. Can't stand em. Hate them so much, in fact,that when one lets one of these silver bullets go in the river, the demons fly out of you with such abandon that you enter a state of purifying bliss. And you get to clog up the river with banana leaves at the same time! Win, Win!

Chiang Mai's festival is also famous for releasing wire-framed cylindrical paper lamps. Its simple: Take a kerosene coil, attach it to aforementioned lamp. Light the coil, wait for the noxious gas to build up inside the lamp until it becomes airborne, and Poof! You've got a beautiful, glowing, flying environmental hazard! How magical! But wait, where does that fireball land? Not here, you say? Goodenough for me!

Oh I wish we could do this five nights in a row, and throw in fireworks for good measure? Wait, you've not only got fireworks, but noisemakers? Ok, I've 'heard' those dinky things they sell in the States called 'noisemakers'. I want real, loud, "I think the hotel's been bombed at 4 am" noisemakers. You've got those too? Great, I'll take a gross. But wait one more goddamned second, surely there have to be legal restrictions. Noise ordinances, disturbing the peace, etc.

Oh, they've been lifted for the festival, and the boys in blue have been seen setting off fireworks on duty? Bingo Bango Bongo I love this town.

I'm really not that cynical about the Loi Krathong Festival. It was magical and romantic for Meghan and I. We had a blast. However, we did run into a landed lamp about 50Km away on our elephant trek a few days later. No doubt there were a few animal casualties caused by all of that magic.

Meghan got a head cold after about 5 days in Chiang Mai, so we had to postpone our trip to the Buddhist farm. So, with Meghan tucked into bed watching a dubbed 17 Again, I went off looking for some trouble. Look no further than the moped rental agency, young man. I'd never ridden a moped or motorbike in real life, but kicked butt in MotoCross on Nintendo, and that chick from Miami was always riding that thing all over campus in college. How hard could it be? I'd soon find out. It went something like this:

Me: How much for a moto for the day?

Lady: 100 Baht (3 bucks)

Me: OK

Lady: You ride before?

Me: Never.

Lady: Here go (revs throttle)
Here stop (squeezes brake)
Here start (points to key)
OK bye bye

And off I go onto the busiest street in the city. By busy, I mean no traffic lights, no stop signs, no land dividers, cars, trucks, buses, tuk tuks (big motorized tricycles with seats on the back two wheels),motos, and pedestrians and vying for about 2 lanes worth of space. But hey, at least its a boulevard.

OK, OK, I can do this. I drive my 50cc a few blocks, holding my sliver of the road, getting dirty looks from tuk tuks and getting passed by small children on more powerful engines, but hey, I'm really doin' it! OK OK but don't get too over-confident, Matt. Let's try to take some turns at an intersection. So I pull off on a side street and arrive at a 4-way stop.

OK, right turn. Easy enough.

As I make the turn I actually have a detached view of my synapses arguing:

Old, seasoned authoritative driving synapses: Right turn into right lane.

New, pip squeek Thai driving synapses: No, left lane in Thailand, dummy!

Old, seasoned authoritative driving synapses: Listen, you, I know what I'm doing. 12 years of driving experience talking.

New, pip squeek Thai driving synapses: NO! 0 days in Thailand, you fool! Get in the left lane!

Old, seasoned authoritative driving synapses: Oh shit you're right! Abort turn, just go straight!

New, pip squeek Thai driving synapses: You're going straight, but still into the right lane you idjeeut!

Old, seasoned authoritative driving synapses: Screw this, I'm out of here. (Enter Jessica Rabbit into stream of consciousness.)

SCREECH! SLIDE! SCRAPE!

No major bones broken. Legs still intact. OK I think I'm alright. Just a minor scratch on my toe and a loose side mirror. Confidence...drained. Ego...shrunk. People I know in the city...0. No witnesses to tell my friends.

OK, back at it then. Left lane, moron. Left lane.

So after the little incident at a major intersection in Chiang Mai, I took a little more time getting used to the new force between my legs. Never a bad thing. And, after several somewhat shaky but incident-free turns, I made my way out of town.

On the way to Chiang Mai

2010-01-26T20:00:00.000-08:00

OK so its been a while since I've emailed and a lot has happened. So, where'd I leave off? Bangkok. Right. Wow, that was a lifetime ago. So we never went to the Thai island, opting instead to head north and stop at a few places along the way. First stop was Ayutthaya. About 100km north of the capital, Ayutthaya boasts stunning Khmer-style ruins and an amazing inner-island. The city is well over 600 years old and was the seat of the Siamese for a good long while. Anyway, Meghan and I took a bus there and met a Belgian couple along the way. We spent the evening together taking a boat tour of the city, and stopping at ruins and temples (wats). The night market was our disembarkation point and a tasty Padthai was fried up for about 60 cents. Noodles, veggies. Sprouts, Nuts. Yum. Meghan and I rented bikes the next day and toured the city. Sweltering heat, but no matter, we're fresh packers and can handle a little perspiration.

The next day we got to the train station to head for Lopburi. 13 Baht for a 90 minute train ride. That is 35 cents, people. We were so proud of our travel prowess until the train rolled up overflowing with human flesh. Hot, sticky, grabby, dirty human flesh! But not the sexy kind. The kind that is trying to sell dried fish and lukewarm soda to the heaping masses. It was a long hour and a half to say the least.

But we successfully made our way to Lopburi, the land of monkeys! Hot, sticky, grabby, dirty monkeys! And what a relief they were! As legend goes, a band of monkeys came in from the surrounding forest and set up shop in some temple ruins. Then they mated. And they mated some more. More mating occurred. Probably some buttscratching/sniffing to break up the monotony. Then back to the coitus! After a few generations of hot libido action, there were nearly more monkeys than people. And the people, being good Buddhists, couldn't bring themselves to killing the buggers off. So, they basically gave them the block of the city containing the ruins. You pay about 50 cents to get into the temple area and are immediately overwhelmed by an attack from air and land. Big and small macaques barraging you from all directions, using all their limbs to climb all your limbs for no other seeming purpose than to eat your hair. Cute! And getting them off is a world of pain. Swinging wildly is an understated way of describing my actions. Somehow, these flea-biters just think I've become a living merry-go-round, and as soon as I've flung one off, 2 have jumped back on. At first I felt bad for the babies. But after a few harried minutes of this monkey business, I was using the smaller ones as cannon fodder for the more pugnacious among the aggressors. A lessor soul might have been more craven, and alas, many a Chinese girl was humbled and humiliated that day, but I: I, my friends, showed the monkey a thing or two about what it is to be a Lyon. By the end of it, I was using butt munchers as javelins. I took home the gold for Monkey Toss.

What is that saying about "If you give a mouse a cookie?" Well, if you give a monkey a temple, it will want a city. The temple has the majority of the monkeys, but the surrounding city blocks are also crawling with simians. They hang from the power lines like urban vines. They inhabit rooftops like treetops. They use phone booths to make mating calls. They even wait for cars to stop to cross the street like....well there's no real jungle analogy for that, is there? They cross the street like flipping pedestrians! We have pictures to prove it!

After we'd had our fill of monkeying around, we soaked up some internet rays, then headed to the night market for grub and our first of many encounters with urban elephants. Just walking around, eating bananas out of tourists' hands. Master in tow, of course.
Well, Lopburi was merely an action-packed day stop and that evening, we hopped an overnight train to Chiang Mai, the capital of Thailand's North.

In the beginning...

2010-01-26T19:57:00.000-08:00

So a quick rundown:

Flew into Tokyo last Wednesday after leaving Tuesday. Flights were good, Yusuke Asakura of SHC fame picked us up at the airport. Went to Akihabara, which is a crazy Electric Town. Stories upon stories, buildings upon buildings, bazaars upon bazaars of electronics and accessories. It is nuts on a grand scale. Estimated at 35 million for Tokyo and its burbs, the city puts everything in America to shame. Like humiliating, cry in your soup shame. Spent the next day sightseeing, typical tourist stuff. Nothing out of the ordinary if illegible writing, hoards of Asians, urban shrines, lights so bright midnight feels like noon, pachinko parlors, screaming sushi chefs, short-skirted schoolgirls, smoking businessmen, and the most crowded and complex train system these Alabama eyes have ever seen is ordinary. And chopsticks.

What a blast.

The next day, after Meghan got bit by 'Tiger Mosquitoes'--an insect of questionable existence--the 3 of us headed to Nikko, the Japanese town of shrines. The motto is 'Nikko is Nippon'. Maybe. A little too many folks with cameras for my taste. But hey, I was one of them. And at least we were nearly the only Westerners. Beautifully crafted shrines and temples. It is the home of the Shogun warriors, sworn to protect the people of Japan. I felt like I was in Ninja Scroll. Some really interesting prayer rooms and legends surround the area and I was happy to have a translator. We will miss YuCrunk.

After sleeping in a forest lodge run by a monk, we went back to Tokyo and Meghan and I met up with John Alexander of Fairhope/Prague lore. John is a man of all cities, so to speak. A chameleon of a man, yet he keeps his roots. He and his Japanese fiancee (congrats!) take us to what else but Karaoke. And what a time it is! So much better than American. You have your own soundproof room to belt your heart out. We ran the gamut. The Doors, Sir Mixalot, Alan Jackson, Limp Bizkit, B-52s, Weezer, Biggie Smalls, Ricky Martin, and some Japanese flavor to name a few. I was way hoarse, but no complaints here! Then on to the hipster barrio for a little shisha hookah action. Nice hippie Japanese folk. Grateful Dead as we arrived, turned into some Phishy noise as the hours turned wee. Strange juxtaposition, but an absurd laughable life this is anyway! Then to an Andy Warhol-inspired bar with surfing movies playing projection stylee.
The next day, John and Maiko took us to an art festival on the outskirts of the city, off Tokyo Bay. Nutso bananas. Everything from traditional Japanese art to anime, photography, light art, performance art, live music, interactive art, bondage, artists painting as it happens, robot art, zombies, video games, sex art, minimalist, abstract, post-modern, terror, death baby dolls, and Hello Kitty.

We came and left with a subway with no human controller. A 30 minute ride between skyscrapers with no visible hand at the wheel. The urban jungle is growing a brain.

This morning we said our goodbyes to Yusuke, a wonderful host!!!!! Thanks so much you made our time in Japan unforgettable!

Now in Bangkok. Near Khaosan Road. Overrun with Westerners, but at least they're of the groovy laid back ilk, and not a bunch of people from Birmingham. I hate Birmingham. Just stuffed ourselves with $1.50 amazing Thai food and about to plan the next few days before heading to a Thai island perhaps? Or maybe a national forest? We shall see! I hope all is well in the States. We are doing well, although it is near 90 degrees with no A/C. Maybe a week will get us right.

If you've been to the region, let me know, I'd love to hear some stories/suggestions!

Good luck and good spirits!

Well, look who came crawling back to blogspot.

2010-01-26T19:53:00.000-08:00

Hello All. After nearly 3 years of silence and at the behest of my beloved, I've decided to post my emails to people more important than you.

They are of my current 6 month trip around South East Asia. Enjoy. Or don't. Go back to refreshing your facebook news feed, then.

Springtime

2007-06-03T17:45:00.001-07:00

I am so fucking sick of living with 5 girls. Most of whom are just self-absorbed drama queens who love to cry almost as much as they love America's Next Top Model. I'm not sure which is worse. Watching girls cry, or watching girls watching girls cry.

I need testosterone. I need my friends. I have mostly well-wishers, in that they don't wish me any specific harm. Yet.

I need to not feel pressured to keep dumb conversations about who the fuck knows. I need to get outside of downtown.

I need to get blackout drunk on Big Sleaze concoctions.

Well, my wishes will come true. I'm making a trip down South and the end of June. June 22-July 2 to be exact. And not a moment to soon. I've seen every episode of Sex and the City. Every fucking one of them.

For your consideration.

2007-02-13T08:21:00.000-08:00

Alrighty boys and toys. The time has come to let you in on a little secret. Papa Bear's back in the States. That's right. Holed-up in Madison, Wisconsin of all places. The frozen tundra, the Badger State, America's Dairyland, the Cheesehead State, the land of milk and....well, more fucking milk. What brings a world traveller like myself to such humble abodes as this, you might ask? Well, if any of you know me, then you fear me. And if you fear me, then you respect me. And if you respect me, then you venerate me. And if you know what venerate means, then you're probably not one of my friends because most of my friends are soulless, toothless hicks. If you're one of the few that have passed through my filter of continence unscathed, then you have passed a mighty test indeed.

Welcome True Friend. From now on, I'll just call you Thomas Friedman to keep your anonymity and sanctity intact. So, Thomas Friedman, you're curious about why I moved to Madison, eh? Well, Thomas Friedman, let me tell you a little story about Big Boy Lion and Big Girl Fox. One day in the Forest, or the Bush, or the Savannah, or wherever the hell lions and foxes live in harmony with each other. Wait, lions hunt foxes? Fuck. Lets just pretend for one goddamned minute that one doesn't live in fear of the other so I can get through this horribly-structured parable about how lions and foxes are really in love with each other and they left the Outback to try to live in peace and harmony in Madison, Wisconsin and go to school and earn a little bit of money and help people with developmental disabilities and party with college kids and go to concerts and eat a whole lotta no meat and lay in bed all weekend watching Deepak Chopra DVDs, but mostly just every single goddamned episode of Sex and the City. Oh, I guess I just did. Damnit. I guess I don't have to talk down to you, Thomas Friedman. You understand in perfect English what's going on. You're great. You really are a True Friend. Kinda like Carrie (sane one) and Samantha (the slutty one) and Miranda (the cynical one) and Charlotte (the crazy one) are true friends. Gosh, Thomas Friedman, if you and I were on Sex and the City, who would we be? Wait, I know! I'd be Miranda because I'm always so self-conscious about my body and eager to let people in, but so angry when it doesn't work out, and you'd be Carrie, not because you're sane, Thomas Friedman, but because Carrie and Miranda are best friends! True friends, you might even say. And that's us, Thomas Friedman, True Friends! Ok, now if you were a guy on Sex and the City, who would you be? I know what you're thinking, you'd be Big. No way, Thomas Friedman! While you have the looks and the debonair of that macho studcake, you'd have the sensitivty to introduce me to your mother at Church and you'd never marry some bimbo you met in Paris and then sleep around on her with me. No, you'd definitely be Aiden! You have the suave and silk of Big, but the down-home country good looks and morals of Jerry Falwell. I think I'd be Steve because I'm some kinda adorable and good-natured with just the right pinch of a wild hair mixed in with bookishness that appeals to someone like Miranda. And then we, Aiden and Steve, can date other, more attractive women than Carrie and Miranda and open up a bar together and be together forever! Oh, Thomas Friedman, won't it be grand!!??!!

As you can see, I have big plans for us, Thomas Friedman. But in the meantime, I'm up here in Madison with Meghan learning about all kinds of things. Like how girls work. And what to do when 5 girls are watching Bad Girls Club.

Hint: rhymes with "Snow in your boom and salivate."

After my lessons are finished, I'll be leaving the allegorical cave, or in this case a den (10 comprehensive reading points for why) and making a pilgrimmage down south to share my lessons with any and all who care to listen/trapped on balcony of the apartments while I'm telling someone else. Alumni weekend. be there or be scared.

In the meantime, here's a video that is of the utmost importance and urgency for those without the giggles.

A Day of Infamy.

2007-01-14T21:36:00.000-08:00

Ok, this is something that has really been pissing me off lately. My counterparts Irving Longface and SHC Barrel have really been slacking as of late. To the point of a violent rage on yours truly. Firstly, the Barrel has been inactive since September 1st. That's basically August. Which is two, almost three seasons ago. And the last entry was about Paul fucking Walker??? No offence to TJoe for making the entry, but this was supposed to be a fluffer piece. A feel-good filler article during a slow news day. And this hack's mug is front row center to my daily wanderings in the virtual world. C'mon Hummer. Stand up or sit down. Quit squatting over the Barrel.

Number 2. Irving Longface makes me wanna. He deletes all the priceless comments from his blog, including the legendary 'Nigger' marathon. Now, one could see this as Mr. Face is trying to clean up his act for the med school goons he'll soon be taking it from. But now, without even so much as a Good Night and Good Luck he's thrown his whole blogging livelihood out the window and let the net sharks replace it for a web search for "county jail". Now I'm sure Irving has nothing to do with a county jail. Or maybe he does. Either way, his legacy will that of shame and cowardice.

Own up you maggots.

Yup.

2006-12-21T18:18:00.000-08:00

So its 245 in the mornign the night before I leavce the czech republic.. I’m leaveing a completely different life for the one im about to embark on. Its going to be a strange transistion. I just have to remember that its no more strange than moving to the Czech republic alone. But the psychology involved is sometimes overwhelming.

What im goin got miss about the Czech republic

The beer
The bear
The ease of trams
The metros
The international trains
The z card
The domestic trains
The people on the trains
The women on the trains at 10 in the morning
The baby carriages
The random absurd art
The small village that looks like every other one
The 60kc daily menu
The 25kc beer
Delvita
Baggin your own groceries
Putting 10kc coins to get a cart
Riding the tram one stop for free
530 wake up alarms
spending the majority of the day driving
falling asleep in Prague and waking up in a different time and a different world
playing for kids
doing the magic
digging in kids’ ears
shoving 10 year old children around with a fake plastic gun pretending to be a government agent in search of aliens
being the alien
being the ‘evil brother’ Stephen
rolling a cigarette on stage
making out with air on stage
being hard
interacting with Czech kids
talking to them in Czech
leading them towards understanding
hoping to make a connection
maybe making a random connection that I will never know about 
playing in nice theaters
playing good shows
a nice meal after shows
driving through Moravia in the fall
driving down a tree lined road in the fall
commuting for work
working my ass off for bullshit language agencies
buying the homeless magazine
showing a ticket controller my pass in confidence
buggering off for a weekend in a different country
paying 300kc to travel by train all the way across the country
the eye candy
trying to speak Czech
skiing in the mountains for 150kc
random vacationing skiing for less than 2000kc
rolling and smoking a joint in a nice bar
ease of experiencing art
ease of having a random experience
Czechtek
Waking up and not knowing exactly to expect
Pim’s cookies
Ease of seeing manmade beauty
Ease of hearing poetry or music
Genuine people experiencing life
Amazing churches within a walking distance from anywhere
Cheap food
Cheap rent
Sense of renewal constantly
Open frontiers
Open possibilities
More freedom
More ease
Less stress
Less pressure
More isolated
More unaffected
Less frustrated
More extroverted
Less self conscious
More self conscious

Welcome to the Land of Magyar (Pt 2)

2006-12-02T05:13:00.001-08:00

So the last night we were in town, I went out with some of the students and some of their friends. We went to the bar I'd met them at the night before and I basically stood at the bar for 10 minutes getting a couple of beers in me quick. One social courtesy that I've let go of over here is alcohol etiquette. No one cares if you have a beer or two at lunch. Its no problem to drink with 16 year olds. Which I did a lot of that night. And they drank me under the table. After catching up, they took me to a music club that actually played some of the best music I've encountered going to a random bar. A good mix of American rock classics and Hungarian hits. Some of the tunes spun included "Smells like Teen Spirit", "Intergalactic Planetary", "Killing In the Name Of", and "Du Hast". Rockin time to drink til you slobber and dance til you fall down. I bought some Hungarian cigarettes and Lord almighty what horrible creations those things are. Even when its 2 in the morning you take one drag and stuff it out. Foul junk. But smoked a joint with a couple of the kids and had to fend off one of the girls who was drunk and drunk. Sorry boys, this stud is nailed! Meeeeowwww!

I remember walking home and thinking and coming to some sort of conclusion about some meandering that I had and wanting to remember it and saying it out loud so that I could conjure it up the next day. But alas, I need to be bugged 24/7-for the Scrapbook!

I woke up at 6.30 and hastily and clumsily packed my bag and made my way to the car. David and Lenka were waiting for me. I told David the day before that I would drive the first 4 hours to Budapest, but he took one whiff of me and knew he'd be driving the whole way. I immediately passed out in the backseat and woke up 2 seconds later in Budapest. After watching David drive around in circles for a half hour, he finally dropped me off at Keleti Pu Train Station where I took a train to Eger. It was a bit of a rough ride. One of those feelings of feeling sick from the alcohol, expounded by the fact that youre traveling on your own in a foreign country with no idea where you're going and where you will sleep that night. But as I slept off the last remenants of the Grosser my outlook began to improve. I got off the train in Eger, not really noticing anything special. I was immediately approached by a little old lady named Kami, I think. She offered me a room in her house for 3000 Forints (12 USD)a night. I was hoping and half-expecting this to happen. I immediately accepted and we headed in the direction of her flat. Along the way she practiced her English by telling me about her son (who of course I remind her of) who is in University and will grow up to do great things, no doubt in her mind. As we are walking, I'm looking for signs that tell me I've come to town worth coming to. My guide for this trip was an Eastern Europe Lonely Planet from 1990 that I picked up in the Book Nook for 50 cents. The place seemed like nothing special.

We arrived at her flat and she told me the school adjacent was the one she was principal of for 30 years after teaching there for the 10 years previous. Wow. She knows this square kilometer better than anybody else, I bet. She showed me to my room and I was so pleasantly surprised to see it. Such a nice guest room with two beds, a television, a few couches and bathroom connecting to the main hallway. She sat me down and went over some tourist brochures, train and bus schedules, and a small history book of the town. After seeing some of the pictures, I was eager to go out and explore. I paid her for the first night and showered up and left to venture into the city.

Equipped with a small map and one of the brochures, I tried to make my way to the center. Seeing a signpost with numerous directional arrows, I stopped to read it. I was picked up by a middle aged Brit who was friendly enough to show me into town. He was more about talking about himself than anything and apparently had come here to have some dental work done. (Is there no limit to what the Brits do to keep up their oral hygiene?) When we made our way to the square, he "left me to it" and I was on my own once again. My first impressions of the historical center of Eger were great. It actually reminded me of Destin, Florida for some reason. Very clean, kept up for tourists--but not over-crowded, and with a vibrancy and real connection to the past that was palpable. I decided the first thing I should do was to visit the Minaret to get a bird's-eye view of the town. So I walked past three Christian churches to make my way to this remarkable structure. Being completely ignorant of the history of Eger, I paid my 50 cents worth of Forints to scale the very tall and slender Muslim offering to God. The enclosed spiral staircase were about as steep and narrow as to make Houdini claustrophobic. I had a sweeping thought of what would happen if this thing were to come crashing down with me halfway up, stuck inside. But the feeling passed and I finished climbing the 97 steps for an absolutely incredible view of the town. To come from the train station and then to the apartment (both of which are outside the historical center)and have no real idea what is around you, and then to climb a 400 year old minaret (which is the northernmost Muslim monument in Europe) and see the entire town spread out before you, fills you with such humility and excitement that any tiredness I felt was instantly whisked away and replaced with a sense of immediacy for discovering. The town is breathtaking. I came to learn that the Castle was the stage for one of the most epic defences in all of Europe. It was here in 1552 that less than 2100 Egerians fought off the Turkish army 80,000 strong! Imagine that!! 2100 townspeople-men, women, and children--not soldiers--kept 80,000 Turkish military men at bay. Unbelievable!

But anyway, I got a good feel of the surroundings and slowly made my way back down to the Earth. The invigoration I felt gave me itchy feet and I spent the rest of the daylight hours being amazed at every turn. Beautiful little cobblestoned streets, not unlike Prague, but felt much more authentic. I even found a skate park nestled under a beautiful Eastern Orthodox church. The perfect weather and surroundings led me to take everything in and fully enjoy my existential being, while still feeling connected to the people and the place.

I stopped in the most beautiful Baroque Church I HAVE EVER SEEN and was treated to candy of the eyes and ears as Mass was just finishing up and a children's choir serendaded me as I strained my neck trying to force me senses to soak up much more than they are used to in the hope that my consciousness would also be expanded. After leaving St. Anthony's, I ventured over to St. Stephen's Basillica and was absolutely blown away!!! You know when you're in the mountains or the beach or Rome or Washington DC or some great place of natural or architechtural beauty? The first impression is usually really nice, but you become accustomed to seeing things that aren't normally in your everday experience. You start to expect to see beauty. Well, St. Stephen's is, of course, surrounded by beauty. But the beauty pales in comparison. The layout of this place is on such a grand scale that when you see it, its like one of those effects in movies where the camera simulaneously zooms in and moves away from you. That's what your mind is doing as you try to grasp the beauty and sheer scale of St. Stephen's all at once. A great experience. The church is still so far away from the street that its like climbing up the Lincoln Memorial. You have a lot to do and a lot to comprehend before you are even close to it. Once inside, its the familiar open-mouthed, glazed-over, no-fucking-way look that I've grown so accustomed to over here.

I made my way past the open-air Turkish Baths and back to the flat. I watched some news coverage of an African election race and fell asleep. In the morning I woke up, showered, and made my way to the bus station to hop a bus to Aggtelek. Of course I was so out of it that I didn't realize it was the end of daylight savings time, but no matter. I had an extra hour to kill. A pleasant 2 hour bus ride through the Hungarian countryside and I was magically in Aggtelek. Aggtelek is part of a system of huge underground caverns that spans something like 20 kilometers into Slovakia. In the spring when the waters are a'plenty, you can take a boat trip in one of the underground lakes. It was great to go from a place that has been inhabited since the Stone Age to a place that IS the Stone Age! A nice little tour, although too many tourists talking and flashing their cameras for my liking. In one of the rooms they stage live concerts sometimes. But that day we were only treated to a recording and a light show. Starin' at Stalactites changing colors to the tune of Flight of the Bumblebee is a bit too cheese for me, but memorable nonetheless.

After I took the tour, I had about two hours to kill until the bus back to Eger. So I walked to the nearest busstop and the adjoining village and went to look for a restaurant or store. Nothing doing. There was a nice

Back to the fun.

2006-11-06T13:17:00.000-08:00

I Didn't Install This Two-Way Motel-Room Mirror To Watch People Commit Suicide

A break from the fun.

2006-10-31T15:51:00.000-08:00

Hey guys. Just got back into a 'normal' workweek back in the good ole' Czech Republic and taking some relaxation time to surf the web about things that interest me. I've been thinking a lot about 'ego' lately and what it means to have one, the different forms of ego and consequences of letting it run wild. I read a book a bit ago entitled "People of the Lie; the Hope for Healing Human Evil" by a well-known psychiatrist named M. Scott Peck. In it he talks about the potential for evil in all of us. He also talks in depth about a major Catch 22 when confronting evil in ourselves individually as well as a society.

To paraphrase, he says those most prone to evil are those most likely to avoid investigating it in themselves because it reveals a flaw in the ego that would send it crashing down to the ground. Those people, he says, are most likely to ignore the foundation of ethical thought which has become a maxim of our time: the ends do not justify the means. In other words, according to the basic principle of ethics, we cannot do 'whatever it takes' to realize a goal. He also talks about scapegoating, the act of projecting evil onto others in order to hide or lessen one's own evil. The excuse we've all heard and used ourselves: "Everybody was doing it." This justification for present and future actions not only goes against every ethical and moral fiber we have but also intensifies the guilt by the acknowledgement that that our actions are not brought about by rational, self-reflecting thought. Namely, that we are slaves to the actions of others. The hope that we are not slaves of others' actions is what is called "Character". That we abstain from stealing even if no one is looking, that we stop and help someone when others walk past. Character.

Getting back to the ego: I can say from personal experience that, when allowing my ego to control my thoughts, words, and actions, it is extremely difficult to admit defeat. To say that I was wrong. I think we can all say that we've been in a situation where we knew we were wrong but continued the argument simply for ego gratification. Whether it be a quarrel with a partner or a friendly debate about sports teams. Most of us accept that we are wrong, when backed into a corner. This is a good thing. A healthy thing. The ego is not in control of you. The other direction that can be taken is to distort the past. "I didn't say that" and then lie once more in order to get out of the sticky situation. Not only lying, but spreading disinformation about one's past actions as well as disinformation about one's opponents. This, as Peck says, is the path those prone to evil take.

With that said, I came upon a man today that seemed to lack the good qualities that I just briefly discussed: Ethical thought and Character.

Not only did he lack Good qualities, he possessed Evil qualities: Tendency towards Scapegoating and Lying to prevent collapse of the Ego.

His name is Bill O'Reilly. And he is a man very much prone to evil thought because, in my humble opinion, his ego has taken control of him.

O'Reilly's lack of ethical reasoning as seen recently on David Letterman

O'Reilly's justification of future atrocities just two days after 9/11

O'Reilly's scapegoating to cover evils of the Iraq invasion, as well as his disinformation to justify his scapegoating

I encourage all of you to call your cable or satellite supplier and request that you not receive and pay royalties to Fox News, the channel broadcasting O'Reilly's program.

I Love you all very much.

Welcome to the Land of Magyar

2006-10-28T09:59:00.000-07:00

So what an amazing week Ive had!!! So I dropped my parents off at the tram stop and jumped in the car for a two day tour of Moravia. Moravska Trebova and then Opava. Shows went really well and we spent a night in Olomouc, which is just one of my favorite towns over here. The only problem was with the car, the headlights were so dim I couldnt tell a circus from a cervix. So we had to drive with our brights on most of the trip down country roads. everytime a car came, we had to shut them off and basically drive blind until the passed. Fucking unnerving. But we survived and I can once again impregnate without fear of trading blows with Siegfried. Or is it Roy that's still alive? Either way they're both queers and I ain't about to trade blows with no tigger-lover.
We got back to Prague on Tuesday night, I went right to sleep and woke up to play three shows in a town about 30 km outside the city. It took us an hour and a half to get there and about 2 and a half hours to get back. I fucking hate the roads in this country. Got back in the mid afternoon and at 530, jumped in the car (the one with headlights) and drove to Hungary. To a little town called Békéscsaba. Arrived at 3 in the morning and woke up at 8 to start performing. The first show we had was in a school that had no electricity. And the kids spoke NO English. Usually when the kids arent good at the only REAL language in the world, we have a Czech speaker to guide them through the show. Not so in the land of the Magyar. So it was a major struggle to get through it but we did. After the show we were driving back to the school where we were staying but got stuck behind a horse and buggy for about 10 mins. A fucking horse and buggy. Bringing crops into the town market. Then about 10 mins later, we got stuck behind a guy with a big wheelbarrow pulling cardboard. Who the fuck knows.

So the place we were staying at was like a boarding school. But the kids go home on the weekend. I thought it was just a hostel until the morning when there were about 100 kids screaming and yelling outside my door. And it specializes in gymnastics. So there are kids that come from all over the country to this special school to train in gymnastics. The next evening that kids swarmed me. They just started to say anything they knew in English. So I got a lot of "Hit me baby one more time" "George Bush" and "Pimp my Ride". Im glad they know our most important topics. My room was decorated with the Olsen twins and Desperate Housewives translated into Hungarian. It gives me such a good feeling to know that we are exporting our most influential and sophisticated parts of our culture. But anyway. Some of the kids started just counting in English. They went all the way to one hundred. Seriously. It was like a bad Ali G skit. This one girl was trying upstage the rest by counting faster. Its really hard to keep up enthusiasm about kids counting to 100. I know how this is gonna end. We ended up playing football together. These kids schooled me good. Even the 9 yr old girls were doing circles around me. But then the best kid fell down and sprained his ankle, so that made me feel better.

After the football, David and I dropped by the school we'd played at earlier. We saw about a hundred 13 yr olds get down on bended knee and swear allegience to the seniors. They would swear to let them skip in the cafeteria and then bow. They would swear to speak to them in the formal "You" and then bow. It went on like this for about 10 minutes. All of this was in Hungarian, of course. The chuckling teachers were translating it for us. Such a good-natured rite of passage that could never happen in the States anymore. Teachers in a public school allowing what falls inside the definition of "Hazing" to be performed not only in their company, but openly encouraging it? It sounds horrible, but it was in the best of intentions. And I agree with it. Lets not pretend that 13 year olds are the same as 18 year olds. Theyre incredibly different. And with some rite of passage, whether symbolic or visceral, we as a society are recognizing that difference. I think thats a good thing. Its not about superiority, but about coming of age and respect. Superiority enters into it only when the ego does. But it is presumptious of us to think that ego MUST enter into it. Granted, it is very easy for the ego to take hold of the power trip, but it is selling the human spirit short to forbid potentially spiritual experiences simply because of doubt of the participants' character. That is to say only if the one coming of age is accepting of coming of age. Nobody should force you to become an adult. It is a personal decision.

Ok with that little tangeant off my chest, back to Békéscsaba. After the students' show, we went for a couple of beers and met some of the students out. So we chatted them up for a while, talking about music and sports and all other non-confrontational topics we could think of. Not because it would be a sore topic, but only because they were 16 and spoke a different language. Even if Politics or Religion or whatever was on their mind, they'd have a very difficult time getting their opinions across clearly. So on it went about cars and the Grand Canyon and Robbie Williams. After two beers, we said goodbye, were offered to join them the next night and went on our way. Walked back to the school and went to bed.

The next morning I had free, so I slept in til 9, laid around and read til 10.30 and then showered, got yelled at for having the cd player up too loud and then ventured into the town. Ran into Lenka and David walking down the Promenade. They pointed me in the right direction for a good lasagna gyro and then we parted ways. After a pointless trip to the Vodaphone store, I settled down on a park bench and dug into "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Phenomenal, one of the best books Ive ever read. Such a great mixture of so many elements. A motorcycle story, a father and son story, an instruction manual, philosophical meanderings, a psychological story, a spiritual metaphor. Just fantastic. Im only half way through it, but its such a great feeliing to be totally into a book early on and be excited everytime you pick it up! Anyway, I had a great time reading under the sunlight breaking through the trees. The light hit my page with a strange mixture of shadow that seemed to liven my senses, made me look around at my surroundings, my situation, and the world at large, and smile. I saw the small shops lining the street, selling clothes and household items and everyday things. I saw the cafe waiter taking orders and chatting up customers. The people on bicycles, going to and from these shops, going to work, picking their children up from school. The violin player, taking requests for 10 Forints, Que Sera Sera! I live for this!

I ran into one of the students and she invited me out again with her friends and I told her I'd try to make it. I slowly strolled back home and stopped in a market and bought some snacks. I walked out and saw a strange thing. There was a car on display with its stereo blasting. Standing next to the Skoda was a man in a tuxedo and sunglasses. He moved only as a robot and only to the beat of the music. A guy came up to look at the car and the Robot popped the trunk and and displayed the engine. All very bizarre. A bit closer home, I stopped by the main Church and had a look inside. Nothing compared to what was to come. But thats for another time, I gotta hop a train back to Prague where Ill hopefully find some time in the next couple of days to catch up with everything. If you are a person I know, I miss you very much. If you are'nt, quit reading strangers' blogs you loon.

Mental Fodder

2006-10-13T11:27:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, Just a quick one this time. Have been working like mad. Traveling like crazy. And falling on my face like its my job. Got lots to talk about. Venice. Florence. Mountain Biking. Czech Politics. Aliens. But all that will have to wait. My parents, yes that's right, my parents are flying across the pond as we speak. My father's first venture outside of Right to Bear Arms ever. Evuu. I'm sure he brought lots of steak knives. So my time will be spent with them, and not with you. You selfish scabs. To stave off your hunger for more controversial antics by yours truly, here's a couple of links.

Enjoy mon amis.

The History

The Fringe

The Truth

Chip Gardner's Hero

Back from Moravia

2006-09-15T10:55:00.000-07:00

So I just got back from a tour with the theatre. We were in Eastern Moravia for 3 days. About a Kilometer from both Poland and Slovakia. One of the jokes in my play is me making fun of Slovakian-made gun. Needless to say, it didn't go over well with em. Most of them are dirty Slovaks. Plus shame on me for resorting to cheap ethnic stereotypes to get a quick laugh from a bunch of 12 yr olds. Im going to Hell. Or Hades. Or maybe Gehenna or even Naraka. Nah, I'll probably just enter some kind of collective unconscious, waiting for the conscious ones to make up their minds. Either way, my ethics have been lowered. Other than that little flub, things went well and I spent my afternoons touring the rolling hills and vineyards of the Moravian countryside.

I've been homeless in Prague since I returned from Summer Camp at the end of August. Been too busy to really look. Plus, all the places I've looked have either been too expensive or had girls living there. I consulted my handy-dandy Southern Baptist Bible and it says that if I "layeth with an unwed woman, thou [I] shalt reap the flames of eternal damnation." That didn't sound too good. And I think 'layeth' applies to the same building, so I better stay away. But the same book also I talks about layething with men. So maybe I should just get a dog? But then I read some more and it mentions animals too! Wow, that Yahweh sure is picky about roommates. He sure wasn't considering the financial implications of his rules, am I right?

Also, Monday was the 5th anniversary of September 11th. Don't get me wrong but isn't every day an anniversary of another date? Is that the best name we can give this thing? I mean, aren't we the kings of marketing? Shouldn't the Department of Propaganda come up with something a little more catchy? Something like Rescue: 9/11? They could have William Shatner do the voice-over. His rendition of "Rocketman" would work quite nicely, I think. Or how about Paris Hilton standing in front of the flaming Towers, saying "That's Hot!" Get it? Oh man, they'd sell a million Nokia Sidekicks (or whatever that despicable Spawn of Satan is putting down her cum gullet that day.) Or maybe just nice and simple and direct: "Bush's Excuse for The War Machine". Me, Cynical?

I actually tried not to think about anything on Monday. I tried to avoid the whole idea. But when I got home, Cesky Televize was playing Fahrenheit 9/11 nationwide. Im kinda curious if other countries did the same thing. Anyways, it was the first time I saw it, and its definitely propaganda and goes on needless tangents. "Who the fuck cares if lighters are allowed on airplanes?" But some of the footage and facts really make me sick. Of course, he did leave out the Monica Lewinsky connection, when Clinton, in a wag-the-dog move, bombed bin Laden in order to divert attention from the scandal.

Ok I think I've said enough to make you think I'm a nut.

Here's a little MySpace poster that gave me a little giggle. Enjoy.

My wonderful girlfriend and I had been dating for over a year, and so we decided to get married. There was only one little thing bothering me.
It was her beautiful younger sister. My prospective sister-in-law was twenty-two, wore very tight miniskirts, and generally was braless. She would regularly bend down when she was near me, and I always got more than a pleasant view of her private parts. It had to be deliberate. She never did it when she was near anyone else.

One day "little" sister called and asked me to come over to check the wedding invitations. She was alone when I arrived, and she whispered to me that she had feelings and desires for me that she couldn't overcome. She told me that she wanted to make love to me just once before I got married and committed my life to her sister.

Well, I was in total shock, and couldn't say a word. She said, "I'm going upstairs to my bedroom, and if you want one last wild fling, just come up and get me." I was stunned and frozen in shock as I watched her go up the stairs. When she reached the top she pulled off her panties and threw them down the stairs at me. I stood there for a moment, then turned and made a beeline straight to the front door.

I opened the door, and headed straight towards my car.

Lo and behold, my entire future family was standing outside, all clapping! With tears in his eyes, my future father-in-law hugged me and said, We are very happy that you have passed our little test.....we couldn't ask for a better man for our daughter. Welcome to the family."

And the moral of this story is.....

Always keep your condoms in your car."

Titled

2006-09-04T06:55:00.001-07:00

Just a short one this time. I'm on Skype. Are you on Skype? No? Then you might as well as stop using ProActiv cuz all the acne cream in the world isn't gonna make one licka difference when 'She' is talking to all the hotties on her oh-so-un-nerdbox. Plus, you've got that pesky Ricketts thing. Check it.

www.skype.com.

my name is matt.lyon

Now, I'm sure all of you are aware of the SoaP phenomenon. For those of you living in Gillot's ass-crack for the last 6 months, Snakes on a Plane has been generating huge internet hype for quite some time. Anybody seen it? Tell me about it. Here's a nice little parody that'll bring you back to freshman year. That is, if you were cool enough to hang out with Chase Carter and the 4444 Whores.

All Your Snakes are Belong to Us

In other news: Apparently all our baby-makin has been givin our bitches...wait for it....Cancer. Yep, that's right. Oh Yahweh, thou art a cruel and mysterious Jester. Plus this proves god is a Man. Cuz, if he were a woman, he'd have cancer! Ha, that gave me a little chuckle.

The Next Scare Tactic for Fathers with Teenage Daughters

CzechTek's a Wreck, Croatia's Bodacious

2006-08-25T05:38:00.001-07:00

Alright, finally have some time on my hands and figured I'd put my idle hands to good use instead of, well, you know the saying. So Budapest is really nice, but not much different from Prague, so it doesn't really beg my blog time. We returned to Prague and made our way back to the apt for some much needed time in our own bed after a 20 day hiatus. It was glad to see us. It missed us. It told me so. The next few days are a bit of a blur but it was mostly relaxing and laxing. Meghan was supposed to leave on the 1st of August but, as fate would have it, she was able to join me for summer camp in Selce, Croatia.

But before then we had some business to take care of. Partying was in order. We, along with another couple, jumped on a bus to Cesky Raj (Czech Paradise) and spent three days drinking, taking a dip in the lake, playing foosball, finally discovering where the Czech Rednecks hang, and hiking in the mountains. We returned at noon on Friday and at 5 that day journeyed toward CzechTek. For the uninitiated, CzechTek is a weeklong electronic music festival. Completely free, 24 hours a day. You'd go to sleep with a soundstation a hundred yards away and wake up to the same dj spinning the same beat. Makes you wonder if there was even a dj. Which makes you wonder if the machines have taken over already. But file that in the paranoid column and let's move on. Tweakers galore. Fun, but mostly Drum n' Bass which, in a completely logical world should cause seizures within minutes. Not to mention the strobe lights and drugs a'rampant. I abstained, thank you very much. Twas a people-watching affair only. The complete lack of authority/medical facilities/toilets/drinkable water was a downer, but the kids are alright (aside from bruises from the 3 foot concrete holes in the middle of the dancing area/ex-house foundation.) Matty and Meggy had funny.

Back to Prague and then Croatia ahoy! We left on the bus with 100 kids aged 5-18 to the beautiful coast of the Adriatic Sea. One thing that surprised me was how mountainous it was. I was amazed when I woke and saw the scale of the mountains we had embarked on. Seriously breathtaking. We arrived and had orientation and all that and made the strenuous 50ft trek to the beach. Except it wasn't a beach, it was where the water met stones the size of your fist. So no volleyball weary. Wait, that's "No rest for the weary." No volleyball for the nary. Sure, why not. Ok. The water was clearer than W's rhetoric. Strike that. Reverse it. Amazingly crystal clear water with colorful little fishys I'd seen only in Aquariums and Windows Screen Savers. The kids were great. The same ones as last year, so it was a great reunion with em. Selce is opposite of Krk (Neck), the biggest island of the Croatian Coast, and we were fortunate enough to take a boat trip to said isle and visit a nice little town named Vrbn. Don't ask. But what a trip to see a centuries old town on a rocky, mountainous island. Truly amazing to behold.

At night, we took trips to the nearby towns for the necessary daily ice cream allowance. Most of the kids partook in pizza as well cuz the food at camp was, well, pretty fucking shitty. Breakfast comprised of bread and pate, which meat(s) I'm not sure. Lunch was soup, one step above gruel. And dinner was the kill of the day. Usually of the grey variety. Meghan's vegetarianism didn't fare too well in these harsh climates, so she stockpiled butter and marmalade from breakfast to stave off hunger throughout the day. The coast is absolutely beautiful with amazing sunsets every night. Our days were spent in the water (where you could jump straight from the rocks into the deep blue ocean) and English. The term "English Camp" in this case is a stretch. Mostly just babysitting, I usually threw on a movie using my handy-dandy new nerdbox. The majority of the lessons involved questions of Symoblism in Edward Scissorhands as well as whether Capt. Jack's tattoos were real or not. Who doesn't love Johnny Depp now that he's gold at the box office. And yes, I would love to get him a regular Red Bull instead of the desired Sugarfree cuz then he'd yell at me and there'd be a better chance of remembering me when I see him in heaven. (That is, of course, once Jesus comes down and kills all of the Muslims and Liberals.) Who knows, we might even get to dance to sappy a Clapton song. (I'll have to puke up 10lbs first, and oh my gosh what'll I wear?) But I would'nt lose weight for just for Johnny Depp. That's shallow. The Son of Man don't want no fatties neither.

So camp was great. Excellent paid vacation. We returned to Prague and said our goodbyes to the kiddies, making empty promises to write them and to see them again. Stupid little kids. Our lease being out on the previous domicile, we shacked up with a Czech friend in the heart of Old(e) Town for a week. We spent our days walking the streets, cussing English tourists in Czech and Czech tourists in English. As much as we wanted to believe we were different from the hordes, we weren't. We'd just decided to stay longer.

Then Meghan hopped a plane to Madison last Friday and I've been a shell ever since. Fortunately, I'ved had some distractions. I've been in the Krkonose Mtns since Sunday with an Adult Language camp. This camp is serious. 5 hrs a day of adults who ask questions like "When using two verbs in a row, when do we use the infinitive and when do we use the gerund?" Discuss.

But it has its perks. I'm getting free room and board, meals, and transport there and back. Plus I'm getting paid and my afternoons are spent hiking or mountain biking. Yesterday I took a 25km trip to the top of Cerna Hora (Black Mountain) and rode down the fucker at break neck speeds with no helmet. Or insurance. I know. All the ladies must be screaming, "Matt Lyon, you're wild, you're dangerous, you're baaaaaad!"

I'll return on Saturday and the house hunt must commence. Also, work starts full time on Monday. I must say that it's been one hell of a summer for yours truly. Between being in the States and seeing the Cubs' most glorious series of the year, Chip's wedding, to running around Istanbul in the middle of the night, partying on the Bulgarian Coast and climbing the hill overlooking Budapest (as well as dropping the L-bomb[a first {and hopefully last 〈and hey, i've always wanted to use chevrons!〈 for this young romantic}]) I must say that I couldn't ask for and probably won't ever receive a better 6 months in my entire life.

So that is where I must leave you. As August draws to a close, I hope this summer season has treated you well. I'm glad I wasn't stuck in a cubicle. In fact, these last 6 months have completely validated my decision not to call the life insurance guy for that shitty jobv after graduation. Also, lets hear more from y'all. If the barrel ain't flowin' feel free to use my comments page as a forum. I wanna hear what y'all are up to. Much Love to You. Yours in Christ, Matthew.

Eastern Europe is for Eastern Europeans.

2006-07-31T07:56:00.000-07:00

Alright kiddies. Round two is finally finished and ready for takeoff. So after Istanbul, we got on a bus and headed to Varna, Bulgaria. A nice little drive that took us through the outskirts of Istanbul to give us a glimpse of how the city folk in Turkey really live. Crowded streets with even more cramped buildings; sad, down-trodden apartments that seemed to have been morose since the day they were built. Tenants whose very nature seemed to have been transformed by their surroundings. But ours was just a glimpse of the other half and we were soon on our way into the dark Balkans. On the bus we met a very nice Bulgarian woman named Valena who was kind enough to help us find a hotel once we got in at six in the morning.. Unable to check in until noon, we dropped our stuff off and high-tailed it to the beach. The Black Sea is something of a mix between Mobile Bay and a garbage dump. The waves were almost nonexistent and the beach was rough with cigarette butts and 70 year-old breasts. But a welcome respite, nonetheless. And Meghan was stoked to be at the beach after an 8 month divorce. Slept and dreamt of traveling the world in my own backyard and awoke to her beautiful face, as she showered me with affection. With our stomachs growling and our faces burning we decided to get out of the sun for a bit and stumbled into one of the coolest places either one of us have ever been to. Dubbed aLounge, its a beach deck the size of a baseball field with two pools in the middle. White leather beds complete with cabana girls surrounded the pools and were available for 8 Leva ($5) all day long. House is the music of choice in this swank cranny and there is plenty of it, day and night. I’ll never be in a sweeter jaunt unless I’m an extra in some fake California reality show chronicling the life of Jackie Kennedy Onassis or Anne Bancroft.

In the evening we ate Dinner and took a walk down the strip of clubs to see what we could see. Interesting clubs (with cover being only 2 Leva) but lacking in beats. Mostly dance-pop with some bad bootie bass to make it just slightly unbearable. The next morning we woke up and headed back to the beach for even more fun in the sun. The funny thing about Bulgaria is that it still uses the Cyrillic alphabet, so almost everything is not only in a different language, but also different texts. Not only do they have a completely incomprehensible language, but they also shake their heads ‘yes’ and nod ‘no’. I thought this part of human communication was part of some inherent psychology, but apparently not. Now I must requestion my entire existence as a human being. It makes doing things on your own almost impossible. Fortunately English is their second language, so we had zero trouble doing anything. The next day we went to the archaeological museum and were blown away by what we saw. Art and tools dating back to the 5^th century BC. Roman bath ruins and leftovers from the Ottoman days really let you know that you’re very near the cradle of civilization, which was only a mere 700 miles away.

We went back to aLounge for our last night in Varna and laid by the pool listening to the beats of the jock until we could stand it no longer and ran to the beach for our own personal dance party.

The Bulgarians we met in Varna were such nice people, caring not that we were wandering idiots and incredibly helpful and compassionate. We did see a disproportionate amount of stray dogs though. The funny thing was that all of them had been tagged in the ear by some authority. Which begs the question, do they not have pounds? What good is it to brand a dog “stray”? Our minds blown, we nonetheless shared our love with some of the lovesick creatures, one of which took a liking to us and decided to protect us all the way home. She walked between us and whenever something threatening appeared, be it another dog or a misshapen bush, she would bark and growl and do everything in her power to let us know that she can serve a purpose for us and that she would make a loyal and trustworthy addition to our imagined home. Despite our best efforts, dogs were not allowed in the hotel and thus, we parted ways with our new friend with the greatest of unease. Our train didn’t leave until 10 the next night so we checked out of our hotel and spent all day at the Lounge, soaking up the sun, playing chess, and giggling to ourselves.

We took the overnight train to Bucharest and arrived at 7 in the morning and passed out at the hostel. We woke up and got our bearings of the city. First impressions: Weak. Bucharest reminds me of what would happen if a crazy dictator decided to destroy 1000 year old buildings and replace them with poorly constructed Soviet apartment blocks. Oh wait. Yeah, you get the picture. Bucharest is poor, unsightly, and worst of all, poor. So the quick story behind the last reign of Nicolae Ceauşescu: dude gets power in 1965. Not only outlaws abortion and contraception, but makes it illegal to not have kids, whether married or single. What a punch in the gut to the dude that can’t get any play to begin with. Not only does the pain of rejection sting, he also gets slapped with a fine by the government for not getting laid. By the late 60’s the population swelled and the number of street kids was running amuk. Especially with the amount of Romy (Gypsy) population growing, Romania became known as a cancer on the USSR. In 1989, whilst giving a celebratory speech to workers, we was booed off his balcony. Rumor has it that he told his military general to fire upon the crowd. When the general refused to give orders, he was killed. He was finally forced out, escaped for a brief instance, but was soon captured by the army. Quickly tried, and executed, along with his wife. Nationally broadcast. Nonetheless, hundreds of people were killed during the uprising and millions more were affected.

So Romania is the country I visited that is still stinging from Communist dictatorship in a major way. Whilst sitting at a café, we were hounded 4 times in 20 minutes for money. Beggars are everywhere and its really heartbreaking to see the way some people there live. We were in an internet café that had a hole in the floor. In the room below, there were workers yelling and screaming. And digging. Digging a hole for what I’m not sure, but it definitely didn’t seem to be on the up-and-up. We met a couple on the train who told us about personal feelings and experiences and it’s really amazing to be in a place where something like this happened. His legacy as a megalomaniac is evident in the Palace of the People. 1200 rooms. 1400 chandeliers, marble and carpet as far as the eye can see. Second largest building in the world, next to the Pentagon. Still under construction. sick sick sick.

After Bucharest, we were happy to get to Budapest. Another 6 am arrival, and another noon check-in. Wandered and got food. First impressions: like Prague, only….not. Great views of the river and the night life is up and kicking. Had an apartment surrounded by real-life Hungarians. They have lobsters crawling out of their ears. Ok enough for today. Check pics yo.

Who birthed this Idiot?

Why did Constantinople get the works? That's nobody's business but the Turks

2006-07-15T06:55:00.000-07:00

Crew, Crew. A little MTL updates for you's ass. For those of you who missed Whoreleans for Chip's wedduu, you missed one helluva time. In brief: Maker's Mark, Maker's Mark, Maker's Mark. And, oh yes, Danny made his triumphant return into the fold. Pulp Fiction dance and all. I'll return to that subject at a later date. For now, there are more pressing matters.

I returned to Prague on the 4th of July, after 30 hours of travel. Got to my apartment and made a mad dash to the beer gardens to watch some World Cup action and recommune with wayward American and Czech friends. The next few days were a whirlwind tour of errands and drinking before my excursion to Turkey and Eastern Europe. Meghan (if you're not in the know, the snazziest chick this side of the Atlantic, hailing from the Cheesy State) and I humped a bird to Istanbul. Got in and had little problems getting to our hostel. Our cab dropped us off in Sultanahmed Square, pinched between the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sofia Mosque. Two of the most gorgeous structures this meek Alabamian has ever laid eyes on. We met two Norwegians, Eric and Anders. At least, those are their Anglified names. The were kind enough to get us to our hostel and we arranged to meet for drinks after we dropped our merchandise off. The hostel we stayed at had a balcony bar with just an incredible view of the Marmara Sea, harvest moon and all. Had a few drinks with our new friends then hastened to sleep in anticipation of the exploritude that awaited us only a few hours away.

Our first stop was the Blue Mosque. Significance: lots of blue tiles. Historical significance: loads, the only thing I know is that it has six minarets instead of the typical 4. A minaret, btw, is a slender tower where dude gets Pavarotti on your ass. I'm sure its got other functions, like evoking Allah and junk like that. My first time in a mosque, though, and my first impressions were substantial. Fully carpeted with amazingly ornate tiles lining the walls and domed ceiling. Lights were abundant, but hung only inches away from our heads. Not sure why, but its a pretty cool effect. After we saw what we could see, we got hustled into a rug store, by a very nice Turkish man. Were served apple juice and given a private rug show. Kinda like a lap dance, but change the couches into rugs and the stripper into Turkish air, and you'll get the idea. After the shopkeep realized he was grinding on the wrong ne'er-do-wells, he was still nice enough to have a chat, instead of report us to the surly bouncer, his 8 yr-old son in this case. After we left him unsatisfied, we got some lunch and had our first encounter with the call-to-prayer: a five minute sung reading of the Qur'an. It was largely ignored by the people, but had me enthralled. Pretty much just how you've heard it in Alladin and They Might Be Giants tunes, but a trip to hear it live and in person. It continued to call my attention from there-on-out.

After lunch, we made our way down to the port of Marmara, where we had our first glance of Asia. Much like St Louis is the Gateway to the West, Istanbul is the Gateway to the East (except it doesn't blow nearly as hard as Nellyville does, although East Istanbul is just as Shady as East St Lewy.) I believe this a natural continental border, as a lot of the history mentions earthquakes. We walked through a very nice park and then made our way back to the hostel. We ran into our Norwegian friends and decided to share a cab across the sea to Taksim, a trendy spot of nightlife, to watch the World Cup final. Italy can you know what to my you know where. After the first club failed, (we weren't in the mood to dance to Sonique) we found a cool rock pub with a Turkish band playing a mix of Turkish classics (all the girlies were beltin em out) and classic rock. Seriously, the best rendition of "Another brick in the Wall" I've ever heard. The guitarist looked like he was in Sound Tribe Sector 9 and played just as well. We made friends with the staff and I ended up arm wrestling the bartender at the end of the night. I let him win. We left thoroughly spent and downright drunky. The next day we went to Hagia Sofia, which is amazing. Its present form has been standing since 537, after two renditions were destroyed, dating back to the 4th century. Here's a pic.
Check it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sofia

Ok, so that's all you get now, part deux coming in a few days. In Varna, Bulgaria at the moment. Gotta go nap and eat and drink. Not necessarily in that order.

The "Saint" in Saint Louis is a misnomer.

2006-06-13T08:58:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, so judging by the comments of the last two posts, I can see that you are enthralled with my daily occurrences. Whats been going on. Well, I spent a week up in Annapolis with my brother, et al. It was a great week of eating, drinking, sleeping, and occasionally pooping. Once in a while I went outside to notice that the sun is, in fact, still shining. I kid, I kid! I took my sister to a Nationals baseball game and got great seats courtesy of a Prague buddy. Back-to-back homeruns and a big W for Washington. The only big W that should be in Washington, despite the efforts of bumper stickers (dis)gracing H2s and Land Rovers all over this country.

Portion edited. Rode to St Louis for the Cubs/Cardinals series. Went to Tommy's house and went to a couple of dive bars before making it over the the East Side. Oh how I miss East St. Louis! Actually, I miss it not. After the dirty floors, the dirty beer, the dirty patrons, there's only about 27 other dirty things that go on there. The next afternoon, met up with Hatchard and Lauber for a Chotchky's Lunch. Baked Raviolli and all. Then the game Friday night lasted 14 innings, which I thoroughly enjoyed, except for the whole 'no beer after the 7th inning' rule. After a huge win by the Cubs, we headed over to Al Hrabowsky's for some extra-inning funnery. Pretty standard warehouse divebar, except the men's bathroom has one-way mirrors facing the line to the girls bathroom, so while you're acquainting yourself with...yourself, you're acquainting yourself with the female constituency, who are waiting to acquaint themselves with themselves. It's all very incestuous or laviscious or something else with an -ous suffix.

Went back to the hotel for typical fare late night activities with Lauber, Neil, Col, Hannigan, and Jamie. Portion edited. The next day we woke up, ate, and went to the game again. Cubs blow the game open and Lauber and I spend the afternoon swigging bourbon and eating creamed desserts obtained more or less semi-legally.

After the game, we went to Broadway Oyster Bar and had an absolute blast reunioning to no end, and flirting with the waitress, who was feeding us shots. Just to make it official, Lauber and I rode in the trunk of an 18 year-old's SUV, swigging warm Budweiser. We are now back in college. We went to the bar connected with the hotel, which actually, wasn't half bad. Ate some more baked raviolli, threatened little Lauber with castration if he doesn't stay away from my sister, listened to the absolute worst rendition of "Radar Love" by Neil and Dom via Karaoke, Seriously, the worst shit ever, and watched Portion edited. Then upstairs for Imo's and more tomfoolery of the green variety. So that was St. Louis. Nothing too crazy happened, but I think we were all happy to be in each other's company again. Looking forward to much more of it next weekend in New Orleans. Come on down, whadya say. In the meantime, check out this guy, who seriously lost it.

Standard Slipknot fan actually listens to what band is saying.

I don't have much of an appetite

2006-06-01T06:42:00.000-07:00

So after you see the way the truf the trick ass bitch of the One Man Show, you'll be happy to see that I have found my blog arch-nemesis up to no good once again. This unnamed anomaly might have told some of you that we went to Mexico for a 'family trip'. A confidential email has come across my desk at (Mis)Adventures headquarters to prove otherwise. See for yourself.

Longface using his thespian skills to help the insurance monster line its pockets

Repeat after me, bitch! I come in the name of Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit!

2006-05-31T18:38:00.000-07:00

With great enthusiasm, I am proud to say that my spiritual search is over. And it ends right where it began: with Jesus Christ. Enjoy.

The Spirit of Truth

For Andy

2006-05-22T12:34:00.000-07:00

Ok so I think I'm fully adjusted back into the Fucked Up States of Amorica. SUVs don't look nearly as foreboding of the end of the world as they did when I first arrived and fat people don't look like they're as hungry for young, supple Expat EuroTrash. And I'm getting spoiled rotten by all things parental. Flew back into Gulfport and went down to the strip. Damn. Looks like it hit yesterday. Spent a couple of days at home with the fam and then got thrown back into College, Spring Hill Styzzie.

The first night I was there, some krazy kids set up tarps on the golf course for boozenslide. Yahweh, being the caring intervening divination that He is, was happy to oblige us with a thunderstorm of ferocity. Muff got things started by funneling a beer and making the magic leap. Then he wowed us again by donning his birthday suit and taking the plunge. Somebody should have told his ass cheeks not to open their dirty mouth. Mental Scars! Mental Scars! So then the girlies got involved and made the weeping stop and it was fun had by all. Almost all. Apparently there is something called bottles. When used appropriately they are a delicious way of consuming a malt beverage. When thrown off 3-story balconies for hilarity's sake they can be nasty droppings for unsuspecting Girls Gone Wild. A couple folks went to the hospital. It is rumored that P-Nut got slashed from gut to groin. What kids won't do for College's Sake.

The rest of the weekend went as scheduled. Drink, get drunk, get stoned, get crunk, creep, pass out, repeat.

An excellent post graduation party held at Felix's Beachside was enjoyed by myself and most of the seniors that I allowed entrance. I had to turn away the Guzy's on account of all four girls plus both parents in one party signifies the beginning of the Apocalypse, as foretold in Revelations 14: 8-10. After Felix's, went to Wegmann's and rolled a phat game of Yahtz. Almost a Virgie. That's the second sign of said Apocalypse. Really cutting it close. Went to Pat's downtown for an, honestly, lackluster graduation party. I did get to see McAuliffe get angry, apologize, try to leave without a ride, come back inside, get more drunky and pass out. One more time.

The next day I was awakened by my sister's ex-boyfriend returning a tv set at 3 in the afternoon. Its hard to punch someone in the face when youre still delirious and disoriented. You one that battle. The day of reckoning will come. You know who you are.

On Tuesday, I was invited down to the beach and willingly obliged. But first, a haircut was in order. I've been growing my hair longer than Irving has been growing his monkey suit and Matty needed some loving by Jeff poste haste. Unfortunately our beloved man-candy moved on to greener pastures and I was stuck with Melanie, his portly chair wench. I don't think she did anything, but she charged me for it, nonetheless.

On the interstate, I got a blowout in the green Accent and had to pull off and change the tire with 18 wheelers just feet away. I got it done, but still didn't beat my record in ATL, Dom. Damn.

Finally got to the beach and had a goddamn blast. Meredith made a hot Mexican night buffet and we danced and drank the night away listening to Selena sing in English. Went to Flora-Bama expecting to see it in tatters, but was up and running and helped us along the way to inebriation faster than you can say "Cotten-Eyed Joe".

The next two days are a bit blurry, but you know the story. Wake up grab a beer, go to the beach, pretend to be coherent enough to throw the football, fail miserably, pass out on the beach, get burned, wake up, eat dinner, take a nap, get stupid. The last night we went back to FB to do more Bushwackering and I ran into James Rutter. You know, its nice when you can have a civil conversation with someone with whom you have almost nothing in common with, except that you are sharing a common experience Here and Now.

Woke up at noon, said goodbyes, and took off back to Mobile to pack for a week in Maryland. So here I am in Annapolis for my brother's graduation from the Naval Academy. I'll fill you in on the rest of my journeys at a later date. Sorry for not updating this 'jaunt' in a timely manner, but my flashes of brilliance have been few and far between.

Where the Fuck am I?

2006-05-09T21:29:00.000-07:00

I'm not in Prague anymore and I'm freaking out. More to come as the neurotic tendencies wax and wane.

2006-04-03T05:45:00.000-07:00

The new post by Senor Longface has reached far into the nether region of my very soul and with its bearded claws has procured a memory from the cold, lonely days of my nerdery. A quick Google search put my mind at ease with the knowledge that these gems are still floating around:

Stinky Meat

Stinky Feet

The Fat Project

Caution: Watching these in succesion have been known to cause severe diarrhea.

I Miss Ol' Bammy Once Again, and I Think its a Sin

2006-03-06T04:04:00.001-08:00

Avert your Eyes

Lost in the Great White Open

2006-02-20T05:21:00.000-08:00

The snow has melted, but I don't think that it is Spring just yet. Work is going well, I'm working with the theater a lot. I really enjoy entertaining the kids and meeting them after wards. Many of them are so excited to meet a foreigner and practice their English! Some of the laws over here are a bit strange. For example, sometimes the actors are given some small gift by the school. After one performance a teacher and a 10 year-old boy came up to me, and after encouragement from the teacher, the boy gave me a bottle of beer. It was no big deal until I thought about it later. If I were in the States, I would be arrested for having alcohol on school grounds, the child would be suspended or expelled, and the teacher would be fired. Vive le difference.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to go home for Christmas, but I made the most of it here. One of my students invited me over to her house for Christmas so I was well taken care of. We took a walk in the mountains nearby and then stayed up late speaking of Czech-American relations. Between Christmas and New Year's I went to Slovakia by myself and had a great time. I didn't have any solid plans, I just kind of went. I stayed in Bratislava in the capital for a night and then did some research online and found a family in the Tatra mountains that had an open room. So I got on a train and got as close as 7 miles to the small village. It was dark and cold and I don't speak Slovakian, but I was able to run into a young Slovakian who helped me find my way to this town, Hrabusice. I arrived and the family didn't know I was coming because they didn't check their email that day. But they were so welcoming and quickly made a bed and made some tea and welcomed me into their home. Their son helped me plan a trip to go skiing the next day in the High Tatra Mountains. It was so beautiful! Such a great experience, but unfortunately had no one to share it with. The day after, the son took me on a nature walk into the Slovakian National Forest. The only problem was that there was about three feet of snow on the ground! It was amazing! I've never been completey surrounded by so much snow. There was no escaping it. We walked on a frozen riverbed and I could see fish swimming below the ice. It wasn't completely frozen and my foot broke through. So then I HAD to keep walking because if I didn't I'd get frostbite. We walked for a couple more hours and visited an old monastery from the 13th century. Eastern Orthodox Christians. And very strict. Vegetarians, couldn't share food from their personal garden between themselves, white robes, completely cloistered, with a vow of silence. The only words they could speak to each other was to and from the altar of worship: "Remember one day that you will die." They're Hearty! They were eventually run out by the Hussites, I think. But there is still a group of them in Austria.

I returned to Prague after a 12 hour train ride where I met some Slovakian students. We drank and smoked on the train in the wee hours of the morning, until they got off. Then at 5 am the train broke down and everyone had to walk in the cold and snow to the next town to wait for the next train. So I finally got home at 8am on New Year's Eve, slept for a good 10 hours and woke up in time to celebrate with a million of my closest friends. There is something incredibly liberating about being in a crowd of people and not having the ability to make a decision about where you are going next. No decision, no guilt! Anyway, I think I made up for not being in the States for the holidays, although I miss everyone terribly.

I'll be going to Austria with the theater in a couple of weeks and I think I might be going to France in March. Its pretty nice that I get paid vacations. :) I'm also going to Holland in March for a concert and to visit Roy Dalati, who lives in Rotterdam. Then, I'll be back in the States to visit in May. Somebody better come back dead from 175th.

Everything is UnGodly!

2006-01-29T12:24:00.000-08:00

For those of you who want to see what happens to a true believer in the Good/Evil, Jesus/Satan parody, check out this video of Fear of God turning into just plain Crazy.

http://www.youtube.com/w/God-Warrior!?v=xqYqqwgDey0&eurl=

A Photo Tribute to John Moses

2006-01-19T00:47:00.000-08:00

As we all know, John Moses will always live in our hearts as one of those unique individuals who has touched our lives, but whom we might never truly know. But now, through the miracle of MySpace, we are able to really penetrate a person and discover their inner Being. I feel that these photos speak for themselves as to the merit of this fine American, but if one should find it necessary, I will accept photo comments, to be submitted in an orderly fashion, to the blog comments page. Keep in mind these were the photos he felt were a fair description of his character and suitable for internet publishing.

All I want for Christmas is Tussy. (or was it a new Pie?)

2005-12-26T07:23:00.000-08:00

Hello fellow bellowers. My name is Matthew and I have a problem. I miss my friends. I know what you're thinking: "But Matt: Joey, Chandler, Monica, Rachael, Phoebe, and Ross will always be there for you for only 29.95." This I know. But Danny, Shane, MC, Kari, Will, Jamie, Andy, TJoe, Jenn, Jack, Blake, Bubbles, Billy, Sean, Neil, Mike, Pat, Brian, Ashley, Doug, Burbach, Dom, Blair, and a host of others are not as plastic-wrapable. At least not the fellas. So I'm in Prague alone this year, which isn't all bad, but I just wish I could be there with y'all. Most of the Americans over here went back for the holidays leaving me with a dirty apartment and a black hole in my soul. So I must fill it with holiday cheer. At least its cheap. (Only a dollar for a half liter.)

It was strange because, I didn't really have much time to think about it till the 24th, as I was working until 7 on Friday. So now that rumored Sunday neurosis is kicking in with a vengeance. But I did have a nice Christmas. One of my students invited me over on the 25th and I spent the day with her family. Took a walk in the mountains and stayed up late talking Czech/American relations. Very relaxing, but nothing like embarrasing my family by walking downstairs with an erection Christmas morning. A Lyon family tradition. My parents did send me a gift package, though. The two biggest requested items: deoderant and socks. my best present this year was deoderant, and my biggest disappointment: socks. fucking socks. i realized how a big of a loser ive become when i wish for socks for christmas and my fucking parents dont even get them for me. its not like i asked for a fucking cruise ship or something. Just Fucking Socks! But enough wallowing.

I've been keeping busy these past few months. So busy, in fact, that I've neglected my obligations to you fine people. I'm working more than I've ever worked in my life. It's at least a 12 hr day, which usually becomes a 16 hour day. I'm usually in a car by 5.30 in the morning to travel to some random place in the Czech Republic. I act like an idiot on stage until noon, then fly home for afternoon classes. Unless the car breaks down, that is. I won't go into detail about what has happened. Well, maybe just a little. Two weeks ago, we got stuck in the snow about 200 km away from Prague and blew the distributor block on this piece of shit Skoda 130. I two-door Hyundai not unlike my breathless beauty towed us to the nearest town with us still in the car. Never thought I'd do that. Then, two days later, it broke down again on the 'interstate'. This time a real tow truck came and actually lifted us up onto the bed and drove us back to Prague while we were still in the car! I was ecstatic! What a rush to test the boundaries of law, let alone the push the envelope of the very facric of physics. I fulilled a boyhood dream that day.

So I went to Rome in November with my uncle from Chicago and let me tell you that its a great place, except for all the other people there. I went to the Sistene Chapel and all I could hear were security guards yelling "No Pictures!" Kinda ruins the experience. The question I asked most when I was visiting the Vatican was: "Where did the money come from?"

In December I went to Vienna to ball..er I mean visit Chris McCarthy's sister. Now THAT is a beautiful city. Beautiful white marble errwhere and the Christmas markets put Prague's to shame, in my opinion. But I think Prague's got em beat on nightlife, cost of living, and overall Matt Lyon Merit.

Ok I think that's it for now. I so wish I could be in Chicago for New Years. Its going to go down in Barrel history as THE New Years Bash. I just know it. Dom, I hope you're preparing adequately: rented Port o potties, stolen mattresses, bribed police, and of course lots of vegetable oil. Wish you were here. Wish I was there. Love always. Matthew.

What is a Thespian's favorite room in the House? The Lick Her Cabinet

2005-11-14T05:46:00.000-08:00

Ok folks, autumn's here. The leaves are turning color, the air is brisk, and Daddy's busy acting like an idiot in front of hundreds of people everyday. I'm now working with 5 different language schools as well as working with a theatre troupe that travels the country teaching English grammar to Czech kids. I am in three plays. Aliens, Frank Novotny and the Case of the Present Perfect, and Do It Yourself.

Aliens

The website:

The Alien Grammar Show(for students aged 11-13) - premiére April 2005!!!Be careful, aliens have landed in the school! They program themselves to look and behave like people. They can also enter peoples’ bodies and take control of them. The only way to discover them is to listen carefully to what they say. Aliens speak English, but they make mistakes when they ask questions. This fast, energetic and very interactive performance revises the basic grammar of question forms. However, there is a moral dimension to the show. In the end the students have to decide who their real enemy is, the Aliens or the Men in Black who are trying to catch them.

In reality:

I get onstage in a black sequined headband and a long flowing gown with black and gold sequins. I am the ultimate Jesus Freak on Acid. After speaking Gibberish for five minutes, I proceed to mindread the children by placing my thumb on their head and wiggling my fingers. It either delights them, or makes their fear tangible in the form of tears. Either way, its a knock 'em dead performance. They have a chance to hit me and pull on my costume while I have a chance to a merely take the abuse. Now I know how Goofy at DisneyWorld feels. There's no limit to the depths that we will go for a laugh. From cursing in Czech, to slow motion fights, to toilet humor, we've done it all. The show ends with myself and the other alien (who was disguised as a man in black) doing the gayest most humiliating choreography onstage. Goodbye dignity. Hello lifetime of regret and sorrow.

Frank Novotny and the Case of the Present Perfect

This play actually lets me keep my manhood. At least a shred of it.

The website:

Frank Novotny and the Case of the Present Perfect(for students aged 13-15)Two jealous twin brothers are fighting over the same girl. Eventually one of them commits a robbery and Detective Frank Novotny and the audience have to work out which one of them did it. The key to solving the case is understanding the present perfect tense.

In reality:

I play twin brothers. Steven and Marcus Brown. Both are in love with the same girl, Lucy, and both are complete idiots. Stephen, 'the cool one', "takes drugs, kisses other girls, even says bad words like 'Shit'". Kids go crazy for it. Marcus, 'the straight one', loves his girlfriend so much that he will lose all morality and steal for her. Neither of them gets the girl. Marcus ends up in jail and Stephen is a drug addict. Lucy ends up with the detective. Moral of the story: Being a pothead or a petty thief doesn't pay. Become a private dick in Chicago and you can pick up 15 yr old girls too!Remember those groups of 20 somethings that came to your school when you were 13 and told you that doing drugs was waaaaaay uncool? What did you do? You went out and smoked your first joint. Thats me!

Do It Yourself

The website:

(for students aged 11-16, intermediate)Do-It-Yourself Theatre is a highly entertaining and interactive grammar lesson which teaches the past tenses and reported speech in a way that students will find hard to forget. For good students the show is entertaining revision, for less able students it is an invaluable opportunity to learn important grammar in a way that is very different to the normal classroom methods.

In reality: We have our script on stage and basically breeze through this one with the greatest of ease. The downside: my girlfriend dumps me for her new boyfriend, an arbitrarily picked 13 yr old who ends up shooting me in the back of the head after I sneak into her apartment while she is taking a shower to read her diary. Who says art doesn't imitate life?

Ok so that's the public side of my theatre. The behind the scenes stuff is that of.....well a bad Dan Brown book. Wait. Nevermind. They're all bad. The behind the scenes stuff is that of a Dan Brown book. Not the hackneyed "globetrotting to solve an irrelevant mystery, at the same time making people feel like they've grown spiritually" aspect. More of the "his books are made of paper, my scripts are made of paper" aspect. Get the connection? Good. Moving on.

So my boss, David, is a great guy. Onstage charisma: check. Creativity: check. Organization: X. We drive around in a Skoda 150, which is about the size of an old VW bug. Four people deep and loaded to the top with props. We leave Prague at 5 in the morning and drive to this little nothing town 3-4 hours away with no map and no contact number. Every once in a while we get stopped by the fuzz because they think we are gypsies. We arrive to the schools late with at least one of the props missing and joe-rig the play to make it work without an essential prop or music or both. Its like being in college, except its no fun to McGyver some shit with 200 15 years olds watching you, waiting. But we get it done and zoom on home just in time for Matlock. Nother day, nother dollar.

In other news I went to London last month. I saw a Bollywood production in Picadilly Circus, saw the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace, went to a genuwine British football match (Bolton v. Chelsea), and even met Britain's easy-to-hate commedian Ricky Gervais (of The Office fame). We stayed up all night drinking and dancing and toured the day away in doubledecker buses and making phone calls in red phone 'boxes'.

Ok thats all I can muster for now. I've got a few more stories for you that I'll have to post another time. Hope all is well. Sorry to anyone that likes Dan Brown's tripe. Ciao.

Adventures in Babysitting

2005-10-20T09:33:00.000-07:00

Ok, again, its been like 6 weeks since I've made my mark on that world wide wigga. So lets do a recap, shall we?

SUMMER CAMP

So here are some highlights from Camp Perfect in Jizbice:

Every summer camp has a couple of staple activities, yes? Barbeque, Olympics, Lazy Day, camp food, Haunted Night just to name a few. Camp Perfect is no different.

Well the camp food actually wasn't that bad, in my opinion. A lot of goulash and dumplings, but I'm a meat and potato kinda guy, so it suited me just fine. The only thing wrong with it was that I had a mean case of the fart for literally two weeks. It was horrible. My droppings were fine, but there's something they put in the water or something that made me pull my finger 5 or 6 times an hour for a fortnight. Not pleasant to hold it in during a 90 minute English lesson, but the sweet release that follows....Oh What a Feeling! Imagine my anticipation when Lazy Day was coupled with a barbeque. Time to show these (f)suckers how its done. But wait, what's this? Those burgers look a little raw Pavel, are you sure the kids should be eating them? You don't say? I didn't know that it was possible to mix chicken and lamb. No ketchup? Only mayonaisse? See you at breakfast. Vive la differance.

I taught the kids for about 3 hours every day and the rest of the time we did all the fun activities. I tried to make the English lessons as fun as possible. My favorites were the listening lessons where I would write down song lyrics with word gaps in them and the kids had to fill them in. The end of the lesson was a discussion of what the song means and the band behind it. Of course it was also an invaluable lesson in Americana as seen by Matthew Q. Lyon. I tried to find music that the kids would enjoy, but there's not much in my repetoire as far as Slipknot and techno pop go. Up first was "Dead Leaves and a Dirty Ground" by the Black Dots. The words are simple enough, some times Jack kinda mumbles, but we got through it alright. Unfortunately none of the 13-17 yr-olds had heard of them. WTF.

Next on the list was "Float On" by Modest Mouse, another virgin to their ears. Brock really slurs his voice on this surprise hit of the summer and it took a little while for the kids to get it, but when they finally did, I gave them a nice little lesson on the word "IRONY". With a little luck, their lives will be ruined forever...

I threw in a "If I could, I would" by Phish to teach 2nd conditional. Simple song, nonsense lyrics, but a great way to cruise through the morning lesson.

The rap these kids listen to isn't worth the toilet paper in the bathroon and as a child of the 90's I felt a need, nay, a duty to set them straight. Enter the Beastie Boys. Talk about confusing the hell out of uncultured Europeans. Try explaining "I'm-a set it straight this Watergate to kids that were born 20 years after and 3000 miles apart from the Nixon administration. And then there's I'm-a --> I'm gonna --> I am going to --> I will. That took them two days to digest. But I think they ended up liking it. They were all about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at volleyball, so that's hopeful. But the shit that's popular over here, ie 50 cent and Avril Lavigne is worse than the techno pop that keeps their little post-revolution heads boppin.

That's another thing, I realized after about a week with the kids that they are the first children to be born in a democratic Czech Republic/Czechoslovakia. They are the millenium babies for an entire country. They are completely void of any repression or dictatorship, which definately sets their mentality apart from their elders. The kids are regular kids who hope and dream and want to fuck with authority because they can, whereas their parents' generation were scared shitless and have never fully recovered. Its quite an interesting case study. But I digress...

So we have Hawaii night where the kids get to dress up in leis and all and have a dance. Well to make the dance more interesting, Pavel, the camp director also includes a dance-off of sorts to choose the "Perfect" couple. 10 couples get chosen and the first round is musical chairs. Harmless enough. The second round, he attaches a balloon to the boys' ankles and the couples must dance and try to pop each others balloon. Hooray for wholesome fun! In the third round there are only 5 couples remaining. Let me preclude this round by saying the oldest person is 15 years old. Each couple gets a peach and their arms are bound together in the dancing position. They then race to see who can eat through the peach first thereby being the first to kiss. Boner ahoj! The fourth and final round is something that has been the wish of every guy at every college costume party and only been attempted at MTV Spring Break 2kwhatever. The boys are blindfolded as the girls are laid down. The camp director proceeds to put small candies at strategic positions on the girls' bodies so as to maximize horniness and minimize inhibitions. So that's what my pee-pee is for! I didn't know it was possible to see a boy become a man in half an hour, but let me tell you that it is, lads...it is.

The next activity was the swimsuit competition. I kid you not. The swimsuit competition. This is where girls aged 4-18 shed their itchy hula skirts and get a little fresh air...all while dancing to Right Said Fred's timeless "I'm too Sexy". At this point I was planning my escape route from Zeus' lightning bolt, which would surely be unleashing its wrath on these infidels at any moment. But alas, the second coming is still ahead of us. Hooray!

Cultural differences? Maybe. Legitimate teenage fun? Hardly. Nietzsche's warnings of decadence? Bingo.

At any rate I had a blast at summer camp. There's a couple things I haven't mentioned, but I can't give away everything, now can I?

I'll try to do another post in the next week, cuz I've got a couple of dandies for ya. Here's a taste:

Alien searches for sleeping children inside 10 yr olds.

What's bigger than a breadbox and goes in your mouth?

Back from the Land of Nod

2005-09-06T11:42:00.000-07:00

Ok folks, been a while I know. Hows life? Doesn't seem like many in the southeastern part are lovin it right now. WTF. WTF. WTF. Craziness. Its been frontpage news over here, so pretty much the whole world is keeping up with it.

So I got back from summer camp a week ago and got a job. I'm working with an acting troupe that goes around the city/country and acts plays that teach present perfect and 2nd conditional and other such nonsense. I haven't started yet, only rehearsing. But it should be interesting, if nothing else. Keep you updated on the front.

As far as summer camp goes, it was a blast. So, the gist of it is this. Young American male, hungover and stoned, gets on a bus with 100 Czech teenagers. Chaos insues. I'm the only person in the whole camp that doesnt speak Czech. Makes for interesting situations.

Baseball

Since I was the only American in the whole camp, I was by default the best baseball and basketball player they had ever seen. It was a bit strange as I'm not really that good at either sport. But what can I say? I kicked the shit out of some 13 yr olds. I hit a homerun, (which isnt hard to do with a tennis ball and a fungo) and they go nuts. The first two days I was there, nobody talked to me, and then I got kids taking pictures of me while im walking to dinner. I became a bit of a celebrity. Very odd feeling. Ok so the kids have never really played baseball before, but they were very excited to learn. Only problem: They are so stupid, that they dont even know English. I thought shouting at them would make their feeble brains understand plain English, but these neanderthals looked at me like I was from a different planet. Try explaining the infield fly rule to morons without out becoming a cutter. Go ahead. I've got the (totally bitchin') scars to prove it. But alas, I got someone to translate and I was able to treat my wounds before I passed out (which would have totally kicked ass.)

We are the Fucking World

Ok so every morning at 8am we had morning exercises. Your typical gradeschool/communist method of lining the soft minds of young children up and doing synchronized calisthenics to such numbers as YMCA, hokey-pokey, and boom-chica-boom. It actually did the trick. I was awake and ready to go after about 5 minutes of this trip. It became a very strange experience for me as I was a counselor and HAD to do it. I felt like a puppet at the hands of the the evil Pavel Smutny, waving Czech Korunas in front of my face and telling me to dance for hellers. Oh yeah. This guy loved "We are the World". You know that played-out, trite piece of garbage that is supposed to solve all the world's problems? No, not Soul Asylum's "Runaway Train", no, not Lil John's "Yeah". "We are the World". This motherfucker loved the song. Adored it, couldn't get enough. Played it ten times a day, didnt even know the words, but he'll be damned if the American doesn't sing America's song for the world. Great. So I am in charge of getting all the kids to learn the words, (which, by the way, the lyrics he gave me were so off) and act like I love the song. Any meaning that the song could have had for me is now lost in the abyss of mind-numbing dereliction. If there is a hell, I now know what song will be on repeat. My own personal "Crying Game".

Ok, entry one done. More to come from summer camp later. I promise I had a blast, despite my incessant need to be as cynical as possible. :)

Little Jimmy's Off to Camp

2005-07-29T06:32:00.000-07:00

hello all, just to tell you really quickly, im leaving for a summer camp gig tomorrow and probably wont be able to do much internet stuff for the month of august. but i will, however, be able to do some fun stuff in what i like to call "Nature". busby and his buddies stayed with me this past weekend and it was debaucherous as always. im not talkin'. anyways, hope all is well with yall and i may still be able to receive txts at this place so feel free to make fun of me and keep me up on gossip all at the same time. Peace and Love, Matt

Quick update

2005-07-20T05:29:00.000-07:00

Howdy, wanderers, ponderers; computer geeks, office tweaks; thespians, lesbians. Been about a month since I've posted anything. Sorry, no excuse, just nothing to say really. So here's whats been going on. I've been living and working, though not much of the latter, since I last talked to you. Class is fun, I've got one guy, Vaclav that is a lot of fun to work with. He's not very advanced so I am able to see improvement almost immediately which is rather satisfying. We go through picture games and easy news reports and its a lot of fun to see him light up when he gets something. There's another group of women that I teach who work at Philips. I teach at 8 in the morning on Thursdays which means I have to get up at 6 to do the hour or so commute. I hate it. The faces on the metro in the morning make me want to jam a lead-filled pencil in my ear. Everyone looks so sullen and unexcited about their lives. They especially look down-trodden when we are at the stations in the center because all the tourists get on and are about to have a day of fun and they are about to have another day of the grind. That's only on Thursdays. I couldn't imagine seeing that five days in a row.

Anyways, these chicks are not happy with their jobs and they are obligated to better their English, which they resent. In turn, they resent me. Usually only one or two show up and are always late. They don't give me any feedback as to whether I am doing a good or bad job; I am always excited when the lesson is over. But on the whole, I am enjoying teaching, although not full-time yet. I have acquired a summer camp job for August. I will be leaving on July 30 to work in the mountains in Moravia, east Czech Republic. I am quite excited. The deal is this: the first two weeks I will be teaching adolescents and teen-agers English in the morning and then doing summer camp activities with them in the afternoon. Sports, canoeing, kayaking, archery, campfires, the whole nine yards. I'll be living in a cabin with a group of them, I believe and I am going to make it as much like Wet Hot American Summer as is humanly possible. I will make out with a fellow counselor with barbeque sauce all over our faces. The next two weeks will be teaching adults for 3 or 4 hours a day and then I have the rest of the day off to do what I want, which will most probably entail hiking and backpacking in the mountains. I'm pumped.

What else has been going on? I saw the White Stripes on 3 July at a 700 person venue and it rocked. I left drenched. They only played for a little over an hour, but it was ridiculous. At one point I was front row, which kicked ass. Jack White can work a crowd into a frenzy, and the electricity in the place was rivaled only by 'you know who'.

Kevin Phillips and his sister stopped by right the week of the fourth, so I hung out with them. Of course, their sight-seeing day was the rainiest and coldest I've experienced since I've been here. But we suffered through it and accomplished a lot. We randomly ran into Jason Outlaw and Tom Conners who were in town for a baseball tournament. Unfortunately I wasn't able to hang out with them, but it was crazy running into someone out of the blue on a random street halfway across the world.

Speaking of baseball, I went to the European Baseball Championships last weekend. It was a lot of fun. The Czech team played like high schoolers, the Italians played just below SHC level ball. The Spaniards were about the same level, but the Dutch kicked ass. It was great watching The Netherlands dominate Spain. It was 10-0 after the 4th. It felt so good to see baseball so far away from home. Some interesting tidbits, the trivia question between one of the innings: Which city do the Yankees play in? Much murmuring and hypotheses were being exchanged in the bleachers. When the answer was "New York" and not Washington DC, a collective "OH!" came from the grandstands. In other ramblings, I found a place that plays baseball here about a week ago and I've already caught three games. I am so pissed that I hadn't found it earlier, but nonetheless I'm excited to finally see some professional ball.

Busby is coming into town this weekend, which should be a blast. I can't wait to show him around and see what he thinks of the women. He is the ultimate acid test for that kind of thing. My roommate is gone for the weekend, so lets see if the round bed gets some extracurricular use. I'll hopefully update more often in the future. Hope everyone is doing well. Send my regards to Broadway.

Lost in the Great Wide Open

2005-06-22T05:51:00.000-07:00

Well its been about 10 days since I've written anything, so I guess I owe it to you heathens to say something. Whether or not its important, or useful, or coherent is for you to decide. Ok so I got a couple of jobs with a couple of different firms, but its only about 5 hrs a week between them. So lots of free time to do things that don't cost any money. I got a little stir crazy recently and decided to splurge on the $15 roundtrip train ticket to Cesky Raj, translated, Bohemian Paradise. Its about 3hrs north of the city and it is one of the most beautiful places I have seen. I started in Turnov around 2 pm on Sunday and walked at a pretty good pace. Gorgeous rolling hills, and huge rock formations made from magma from the Cretaceous Period. At one such formation, there are two huge spires that emerged. And dogoneit, about 700 hundred years ago, somebody put a couple of castles on top of them. Its really an amazing feat. I found a sand dune about a kilo south of the castle and slept under the stars with a near full moon. It was gorgeous.

The sun comes up at 4am during the summer here, so I was on the trail near after that. My hike was composed of walking through little villages, interspersed with areas of dense forest. So much fauna around; deer, hedgehogs, birds, bees. The villages are very agrarian, so you would hear bleating goats and roosters for a couple of hours straight. Geese would randomly walk across the road, and chickens and cows would do their usual doubletake to decide if I was a threat before returning to their masticating desires. I came to a forest preserve around 9 oclock. Having been walking for 5 hours and having gotten very little sleep (I had no sleeping bag and the nights become chilly), I decide to take a quick nap under one of the most gorgeous forest canopies I have ever seen. It was cool and relaxing, with birds chirping and a small brook in the distance wooing my soul into the unconscious. After dozing for an hour, I woke up refreshed and invigorated and continued on my way. The area I was in I cannot pronounce and do not have the map, but it should have been called "No fucking way!" Everytime I turned around, there was a huge formation or a color I had never seen. One of the rocks had a natural staircase up to an area that had the most beautiful view of the area. I saw the castle in the distance and realized how much I had walked that morning. I found a lake at the foot of the hill that has camping and swimming and boat rentals and a restaurant and, of course, cheap beer. I stopped and had an ice cream and enjoyed watching the Czechs enjoying themselves.

50km and 24 hrs later, I got to the town of Jicin around 2 that afternoon and treated myself to lunch and a brew in the town square. It was one of the best experiences that I've had in my life and I was so excited to clear my head and reflect on how lucky I am to experience what I do. I hope all of you get out from behind your cubicles or schooldesks or restaurants or wherever you happen to spend your time and get out and explore a new place not created by the hands of men. It will do you good, I promise. Peace and Love. MtL

The Killa with a Villa

2005-06-13T05:34:00.000-07:00

Ok, so lets jump around a bit. Alejo and Dom left me in a pool of my own blood and vomit and didn't even pay me for the night. I felt so used. So I finished my 4 week intensive TEFL Certification, get my certificate and get thrown out of my apartment. Well this happened to everyone, so myself and 3 other guys decide to find a place together. It took us about a week or so of house hunting, but we ended up landing a sweet villa about 5 mins from the city center by metro. Its a four bedroom two floor palace by any of our current standards. It has a pool, a sauna, surround sound stereo, tv, dishwasher, washing machine/dryer, a finely-tuned piano (which is wasted on our dumb asses. Shane get over here and Sing us a Song, You're the Piano Man) and a muthafuckin round bed. Unfortunately it was not won by yours truly, I lost it in a cutthroat bout of RPS. "Trusty rock. Nothing beats Rock." Lest I forget about the mythical Paper, rarer than Sasquatch. Curses! It is pimp nonetheless.

The decor is quite eccentric. When you walk in the door there are holograms on the wall of a vampire who turns into a zombie who turns into a werewolf. Also some of planets and bicycles and other mind-bending images. Not the most welcoming of sights after a long night, but interesting, still. The living room has a smorgasbord of dead insects (mostly butterflies and beetles) and spiders enframed on the wall. Also, there's a dank map of the Alps and Egyptian Papyrus e'rwhere. We have a balcony and a rose garden. Across the street is a university with kids running around at all hours of the night playing music and drinking (yes {shock and awe}drinking) on campus, not even hiding in the bushes. The other night, my roomates went to one of the parties and saw a dude break his arm in half in an arm wrestling match. It sounded like a pretty harrowing experience, considering the guy kinda nonchalantly got up and walked towards the pay phone to call the paramedics. I'd freak.

Anyways, theres a music club called Madona inside the school, plays all your favorites from '81-'83. The sign says its open from 8 until ? Its a pretty Jerry place to be, but its right across the street, so its not bad if you dont want to truck it into town. Better than Illusions or Hammerheads and its fully stocked with Czech women. There's a public pool about 15 mins down the hill and it has a racing pool, a regular pool, an indoor pool, a kiddie pool, a real waterslide, and a huge lawn that everyone lays out on. Being in Eastern Europe, most dudes are in speedos only and the women are dressed similarily. Nice place to go to people watch to say the least. They sell a half liter of beer for less than a dollar. I think I like the Czech Republic.

Still looking for full-time work, its kinda slow in the summer. People take vacations (they call it holiday, the weirdos) seemingly once every ten days. The working schedule is holding at 35 hrs for full time, and a lot of salaried employees still only work about 30 hours a week. Its not bad. They work to live, instead of the other way around. Prague is so beautiful, every time I go into the city, I find a new little treasure. Yesterday, I walked past a wall and lo and behold, it opened up into a huge park/garden. Complete with fountains and grottos and an in-house peacock. All through a random, arbitrarily-picked gate. Unbelievable. Well that's enough for now, looks like the Cubs are on the up-and-up. Although it would've been sweet to pull off the sweep against Boston. Arlene looks like it was just a dream, what a dream. I'll update more, now that I have free internet access at one of my agencies. Peace and Love, MtL.

Shhhh!

2005-05-31T06:51:00.000-07:00

I don't have much time to talk today, so I'll get right on it. I'm looking for a job this week, bunch of interviews and whatnot, kinda fun going to different parts of the city that I havent been to yet. I'll keep you updated. Until then, here's a blog that's much more interesting than mine.

postsecret.blogspot.com

"I deleted the Pope's funeral unwatched off my Tivo to make room for an episode of Survivor."

Kde je Pub?

2005-05-29T06:41:00.000-07:00

Ok, so i know its been a while since I posted, more like an eternity, in my case. So heres whats been going on. I got to Prague on a sleeper car, which completely sucked, didnt sleep at all, police came in at 4am to check my passport, I was ready to get off real soon. I got to Hlavni Nadrazi (central station) and finally found my ride. She took me to my apt and I got settled in. Monday morning class at 10am til 6. Long first day. We pretty much get bombarded with assignments and are told that we are teaching the next day, and the next, and the next. They pretty much just throw you in a classroom and see what happens. I little daunting to say the least. We have these lesson plans that we have to complete and turn in before each lesson and they take a while. A lot of the stuff you have to come up with on your own, based on the prescribed rule or grammar you are teaching. Creativity is key. This course is taught by Paul and Terry. Both are from UK. Paul is the more serious of the two, pretty much no frills, play by the rules kinda guy. Terry is the younger, more hip horndog type that makes no bones about flirting with the girls in the class. Got to be pretty brazen about it towards the end. Anyways, they both taught in the United Arab Emirates for a couple of years and then set up shop in Prague about 2 years ago. The class is no joke, we had papers and interviews and homework and one-to-one tutoring to do. The week was hard work, but the weekend was even harder.

So, the nightlife. The heart of the Prague club scene is Wenselaus Square. Its about ,5 kilometer long with pubs, clubs, hotels, restaurants, and shoppes. Very reminiscent of Canal Street N.O.(or more correctly, vice versa.) Its in the touristy part of town, but hey, at this point, I'm pretty much a tourist that lives here. The clubs range from huge 5 story discotheques to small underground chill out clubs. Thats another thing. Everything here is underground. Almost any pub older than the Velvet Revolution is completely underground. You walk into any random place with a Pilsner Urquell sign and its instantly the coolest place youve ever been. We walked down into one little jazz club and there was a little plaque on the wall that said 'This building was built in 1492.' Can you believe that? This random place in the middle of Prague was built the same year America was found by Europeans! Think of that! The place we were sitting in, casually having a beer, is 300 years older than my country! Blew my mind.

So Alejo and Dom G stop by less than a week since I got there. I put them up for 4 or 5 nights and we had a blast together. It was really fun because I was getting to know all the new kids from the course and Alejo and Dom were getting to know them along with me. I love it when worlds collide. Highlights from their visit are walking the streets of Wenseslaus Square doing the hot dog stand crawl. The great thing about this city is that beer is literally cheaper than water. The average cost for a ,5 liter 'pivo' is 25 Czech Korunas which is just over a dollar. A half liter is about 17 oz. Outside of the centrum you can find it for as little as 16 Kc. And we're talking good beer, not just a natty light equivalent. Not only is the beer cheap, but it is legal to have it anywhere, on the metro, in retail shops, at work. These people love their pilsners. So back to the hot dog crawl. The hot dog stands sell huge brauts for 30Kc and beer and cigarettes and candy and liquor. Its amazing. You can just stand on the street all night and drink and eat and smoke. The cigarette prices here are regulated so you can be in the most plush pub and it will always cost 35Kc for a pack of Lucky Strike.

So back to Alejo and Dom's visit. We go to this place called Lucerna, its a big high school hangout and on the weekends its an 80s dance party. Well after 3am its all slow songs and it is the funniest thing to watch the Czech high schoolers all over each other slow dancing to these horrible American songs. It started off with "Runaway Train" by Soul Asylum and ended with "We are the World" by every single singer in the 80s. The best part was there was a huge projector showed the videos too. Felt like I was in Napoleon Dynamite. I walked up to some random girl and told her I liked her sleeves. She didn't speak English. I didn't care.

The next night we hot dog crawl and Alejo asks the barker at a strip club where a cool, non-tourist club is. He points us towards the Muzeum and says "La Clan". We get there after asking a random dude in a car who points us down a street. No signs. We walked down it and hear a faint 'ump,ump,ump' coming out of one of the doors. We walk in and go down two flights of stairs and its this little chill out club on the -2 floor and a completely dank dance/chillout/foosball club on the -3 floor. We got there around 5 and it was pretty much dead. We hang out for a couple of hours, talk about the Hill, debate about the intricacies of SHC social circles, and have a grand ole time. We decide to leave around 7. On our way out, we notice that more people have shown up and the dj is more involved in the music. We were walking up the steps when we heard MJ's "Don't Stop til you get Enough" interlaced with Drum & Bass. I look at Alejo, he looks at me. In unison, we say "Let's have one more beer." We end up staying until 9:30 dancing our asses off. SOOO many cute Czech girls. The language barrier is a bastard, though. I need to brush up on some key social phrases. "Is that a keg in your pants, cuz I want to tap that ass." Girls love that. We leave and its like the brightest sun I've ever seen. We hop the metro, pass out and wake up at the end of the line. Shit. We finally make it home and sleep until that devil star retreats into the void. We wake up and go back into town for another night. TBC....

Leaving the United States of Mind Part II

2005-04-26T08:02:00.000-07:00

Took a train to Luxembourg that night, which was probably not the best call ever. We a arrived in L'burg and went straight to a map to find our hotel's street. Sex shop ads all around the map, so we knew we were in a classy place. The hotel was 5 mins from the station and was surrounded by either sex or booze shops. Augusine being the hard ass, walks straight into the sex shop next to our hotel. We walk down a flight of stairs and walk into what is basically a small strip club with no strippers in sight--only two fully dressed women at the end of the bar. After we order our drinks, they immediately come over. I had a Spanish girl who had her thigh between my legs before she said a word. (Un)fortunately she didn't speak a lick of English so all I had to do was nod or shake my head, based on her inflection. Finally she realized I couldn't make small talk, so she kinda moved toward my uh.....self but I was quick to turn her down. After Augustine found out how much a bottle of champagne cost (I think it was about 100 Euro), we left. Sorry guys, no all night brothel stories just yet. Went to a semi-regular bar and got drunk and walked around the block once. The people on the street reminded me of the kind of people you would meet at 4 am after a Widespread show. Custie as fuck.

We wake up and one of us asks the receptionist if 'there is anything cool to do in Luxembourg', to which the receptionist gave us an evil look and handed us a tourist map. Walked around and ate fast food like the tourists we are. WHile looking at a memorial for all those brave Luxembourgians that died in battle the fast food hit me like a bowling ball through kleenex.. I had to scurry my clenched ass to a pay toile which was, of course, occupado. After trying a couple of places with no success, mostly because of the language barrier, I finally snuck into a nice restaurant and bolted for the toilette. When I got back the boys were trying to figure out where the police stations and hospitals were. Thankful I had returned unharmed and unsoiled, we wander a little more before our train leaves for Basel.

The trip through the southeast border of France was just gorgeous. Little villages dotting the hillside. When got off the train in Basel, we step outside for a cigarette and see this weird little sight: commerce and transportation happening with no horns or bells, no yelling or screeching of tires. Just many people coming and going peacefully. Not bizarre so much as off kilter. Felt like it was how things should work. Off to Interlacken.

We get off the train and ask the nearest cabbie where Hotel Mattenhof is and he actually points us in the right direction without selling his service AT ALL! We stumble across the whole city, luggage in tow and come upon a woman (that could have been any of our mothers) walking a dog at 11.30 at night. "Mattenhof?" "Ah yes, zat vay" with a smile. We get to the hotel and pass it looking for the hostel, Funny Farm. We ask a guy who had just parked his car, "Funny Farm?" "You're here, man! Welcome!" We walk inside to see people gathered around a bar and two enormous dogs (one being the famed St. Bernard) chilling on the floor. "Hello boys!" says the manager. His name is Tito, late 20s with shoulder length curly black hair. "Velcome to the Funny Farm!" hard to tell whether it was "I'm excited to see you" or "I can't wait to steal you wallet". Alas no wallet stolen, so there is hope for humanity after all.

Anyways, we fwet our room and are out on the balcony when we notice that what we thought were clouds was actually snow on the mountain! It completely blew my perspective on on the mountain from a rolling hill miles away to a towering giant right on top of us. I just giggled and laughed and ran around excited for a good ten minutes. We go down to the bar and meet some other travellers and fulltime ex-pats which is really interesting because the expats seem to be pretty pissed off at the way things are going, while the travellers are not even talking about it. I'm not sure which category I fall into. One expat in particular is Mark, a half-Swiss in his late thirties and a complete boozehound. One of those guys who gets completely drunk and gets up real close to your ear and talks to you like youre 50m away and deaf. Then argues to the death that he's not drunk and the world is coming to an end, so fuck it and move to Switzerland. Nihilism ahoy.

Interlacken is like stepping into a dream where everyone is nice and shit turns into flowers the moment it hits the ground. Blossoms everywhere, Fantastique. We hike up a little hill and get a good view of the city and one of the most startling things about it is the river. Apparently it is created by glacier water. Completely clear on shore, the most beautiful blue in the middle. Me, I don't buy it. They've got to have enslaved more than a thousand gnomes to keep the water blue and the city clean. There's some underground slave cave with little gnomes suffering miserably so that all the Swiss can have clean water and flowers. One day I will expose the truth.

Leaving the United States of Mind- Part I

2005-04-26T06:44:00.000-07:00

After partying till the break-a break-a dawn with Petri I had a great last night in town from everyone at the Hill. I got up and met with Borbridge, who calmed my nerves and help me distract myself from the fact that I was leaving everything I had ever known. Went to New Orleans with the rents and had a nice relaxing night around the hotel. (Although Burbach's 23rd was in the back of my mind!) A quick goodbye at the airport. Mom wouldve hugged me and cried for hours if I let her. Off to Dallas. The flight to Dallas was pretty uneventful. The Dallas-Chicago flight was great. There was nobody on this huge 777, so I had all the space in the world. Each seat had a tv screen and there were like 5 movies, a number of tv channels and a flight tracker-which is the shit. The flight tracker shows you your speed, altitude, position on a map, local historic sites that you fly over, current time and temp (-86 F)! Anyways, sat back and watched Cheap Seats Roller Derby and Meet the Fockers. When I got to O'Hare I called as many people as I could in th 45min layover, before my phone hit complete radio silence for a year. I got a hold of a little more than half the people I called. I was in line to board, but got out to give Danny one more shot. Never heard from him. Good luck pahdnuh. Anyways, my seat was 40A, the very last seat on the plane. It was a full plane, but no one had sat down next to me. Then at the last minute a beautiful blone haired blue-eyed girl comes running on the plane. I tense up like a uh...like I always do and of course I'm reading A Clockwork Orange, a great conversation starter. Nice pick, Matt. After about 30 mins of awkward silence I finally say hello. Her name is Dell and she is from Kansas, but lives in Kansas City. A bright, intelligent girl. Graduated from a small liberal arts college in 04 with a degree in English. Tutors full time in a Title I school in K.C. Has played piano since she was 5 and is visiting a friend who is teaching English in Lille, France. Loves the Tulips of Amsterdam. Great conversation.

My first airline meal wasn't horrible but it wasn't great either. Beef tips and mashed potatoes. The sunset was great. I'm not sure exactly where we were (the Chicago-Brussels flight had no tracker) but there was endless lakes below the clouds and I realized that it was the first time in my life that I saw so much land with no human interferance. Kinda blew me away. I get maybe two hours of sleep and wake up and watch a little of The Incredibles but its dubbed in two languages so it was pretty hard to follow. Once we deplane, Dell and I walk to the baggage claim. I find my luggage pretty quickly, but Dell had no such luck. Bags never made it past Chicago, so she's SOL for a couple of days. We take a train into the city and part ways. Thanks, Dell for making my nerve-racking pulling of the trigger a little less hairy.

I walked outside and said "Grand Place" and was pointed in the right direction. Going by the vague directions from the hotel's website, the hotel is in the 'immediate area' of Grand Place. Fuck no. Its like 500 meters away. I walk around Grand Place with its 500 yr-old brickes clickety-clacking under my monster of monster of a material container. After about a half hour, I broke down an bought a map, but with no success. Finally a deli woman took pity on me and gave me great directions. I wasn't even close. Walking back through the square, I was schoolchildren in their little shorts and long socks chanting and singingin Flemish. What a strange and marvelous sight! Exactly how I had pictured it. Visited the Cathedral of Sant Michel du something or other. Built in the early 1200's. Absolutely gorgeous. There was a display of Christian artwork that seemed like canvas, but was actually panes of wood that we carved out and then painted. very cool. After a phatty nap, went to the metro to look for Augustine, but no luck. Went to a pub and ordered Stella Artois and sat down. The barkeep was a burly lumberjackish Frenchman who was very congenial and actually fit the place quite well. The radio played S&G's 'Mrs. Robinson' and the Beatles' 'Across the Universe'. Made me feel like I was a little closer to my own universe. Finally ran into Augustine and his buddy Andy and went back to the same pub to have a couple more night caps. Great to see Augustine. So much fun to hang out with again.

After waking up 20 mins after checkout we hit the tourist spots up: the Cathedral, Grand Place, Mannekin-Pis--which is this little 2 ft statue of a boy pissing. People flock around this fucker like its Da Vinci's Last Supper or something. Anyways we walk around aimlessly for a while and find this outdoor shopping mall, so we stroll down it and I turn around at one point for no particular reason and there was this ancient church sandwiched between a boutique and a gyro shop. I rushed in, Andy and Augustine were a little more hesitant, but they soon succumbed. What a SIGHT! An all white church! There were ornate art pieces and sculptures everywhere. The pews were just simple chairs and it truly felt like solace away from the storm. I sat there for a good ten minutes and became completely relaxed. I walked back into the world cleansed and refreshed and much cleaner than those at the gyro stand.