Buzz The Bridge

Classing It Up

A few weeks ago Rich suggested that maybe it was time to do a party a little different, maybe class it up a notch. Taste some expensive Scotch whiskeys, smoke some cigars, who knows? Maybe dress up a little.

So due to the predicted rainstorm that night, Saturday afternoon I went out and bought a tarp at Home Depot and hung it over the yard, covering almost twice as much area as the tarp Madore, Ken, Irina and I hung up while playing Beer Die three years ago. Thing was amazingly taut and high before the the weather even started and ended up being pretty stellar.

Rich, Kramer and Julie came over first, Rich with an incredibly good Maclellan, Julie with a pretty awesome jar of homemade Hard Arnold Palmer. The rest of the usual crowd followed. Some pretty damn good Scotch was tasted, some rather competitive chess broke out (damn you, Dave), grilling was done despite the grill previously exploding. Ended up being a fairly great night.

At one point later in the evening I turn to find two cops standing in the side of the yard looking very confused. Apparently they'd been called in for a noise complaint by some new neighbors and were expecting to break up a college kegger. Instead they found women in gowns and jewelry and guys playing chess. A lot of "sirs" were used and we turned it down a notch for awhile.

 

 

 

West Coast People Represent

So glad to recently hear that everyone on the East Coast and Chicago is doing well but been wondering if anyone out there on the West Coast is reading this damn thing.

What say you, LA? San Diego, are you out there? Do you people care? Do you stop by just to watch the train wreck? Let me know.

The Cryptic Canvas

Though expensive as it's a magazine printed in the UK, Empire Magazine is always a fun read if you're into movies, with highly random Top-50 lists, great previews, and a pretty good, non-elitist view of  movies that don't suck.

To celebrate their 20th anniversary, they created this Flash website, where they've hidden symbols representing 50 popular movies from the past 20 years in the page. I topped out at 37/50. Some are obvious, others more tough, a few are close to impossible (e.g., the chicks in skirts). Either way it's a great time waster.

What'd you manage?

Bad Day To Be A Turtle

Rattlesnake Afterstory, Part One

So after a late night camping up on Rattlesnake Saturday night we all get up around 9am Sunday and it's pouring rain. Much bitching and whining from everyone in the group with two last names ensues. But we soak through quickly, whatever, it's not cold. We get packed up and head down off the mountain.

Driving back to 93S to get brunch at the Tilt'n Diner, I almost swerve off the road just before getting to Ashland because in the middle of it is a massive, mean-looking bastard of a snapping turtle.

Thing was easily six feet across (okay, maybe a 14 inches), and not moving despite us and all the other cars speeding by it. I pull over and we approach it. Eric, Isaac and Erin are absolutely terrified and stay in their car.

Imagine this guy but without the cute Lithuanian chick holding him. Sitting in the middle of the road. And much bigger. With a lot more rain:

 

So we try to get the thing to move back toward the nearby lake located at the bottom of the hill by the road. The turtle wants none of it. It tries to take Dave's toes off. I tried to be brave but after seeing a similar turtle cut a two-inch stick in half that my brother was poking it with out on Block Island years ago, I stay far away from him, kinda wishing I was in the car with the other guys.

Finally the Ashland police show up. The cop -- who Dave later points out looks suspiciously like Rod Farva -- gets out and goes "Got a turtle problem, huh?" First and last thing he says to us.

Say "Car Ramrod"! Say it!

The cop rummages around in his car's trunk. We're hoping he's going to pull out some sweet SWAT-caliber Anti-Turtle Gear but he comes up empty. He goes into his passenger seat. Nothing. Finally he walks over to the turtle and after some initial prodding with his cop-boot, finally kicks the reptilian f#%@er off the road and down the hill back toward the pond.

We get back in the car and head on to breakfast and back to Boston. I thought that was all.

Tilt'n Diner. No clue who this chick is.

Rattlesnake Afterstory, Part Two

So on Tuesday Jeremi Karnell, my company's CEO, walks past my desk and sees I have Isaac's photo of Rattlesnake open. He'd been up there once before with us on a fateful night in 2006 and had since then bought a condo in Plymouth, NH not too far away. Jeremi stops and asks if we'd been up there recently. I tell him we hiked up there Saturday and came back down Sunday AM. He says no f#%&ing way.

Turns out he had taken my former boss Rob Rex and Rob's fiancee up to Rattlesnake for a day hike on Sunday. They had arrived at the base of the same trail in the middle of nowhere in New Hampshire just two hours after we left. And that's not all.

Yesterday we're getting ready for round two in a big pitch OTO is putting together, Jeremi brings up Rattlesnake again, but this time says "Oh! I forgot to tell you the turtle story!"

It seems that while driving through Ashland to Rattlesnake, just two hours later at the same spot just outside of Ashland, Jeremi almost hit the SAME f#%%ing turtle.

Apparently Jeremi pulled over with Rob and Jen, they got out and tried also to get the turtle off the road. Clearly less of a pussy than me or the Australians, and definitely less of a pussy than Dan, Jeremi actually tried to pick the turtle up but dropped it on its back when it tried to bite him.

 
He wasn't this big. But almost.

While trying to figure out what to do with the struggling turtle, Jeremi says a redneck in a pickup then pulled over, got out, said "Naw, that ain't how you deal with those guys. You gotta take 'em by the tail!" And then proceded to pick the thing up by the tail. At which point it apparently relaxed and hung there, motionless, finally conceding defeat.

The redneck then got a good discuss-spin going and flung the turtle by its tail over the guard rail and back down into the pond.

I'll never know whether that turtle was just stupid as all hell or was trying to commit some kind of my-life-sucks-lets-end-it turtle-suicide, but goddamn if the little bastard didn't just have himself a shit day.

A Little June Rattlesnake

Saturday afternoon at 1pm I head over to TD's and pick up him, Meg, Sarah and Dave. Eric Menz is following in his beautifully restored custom Hyundai along with Isaac, DeMuth and Menz's dog Bailey. Everyone's together. We're packed. Time to head out to 93N and New Hampshire.

It was a stunningly beautiful day. The kind where you want to go ninety on the highway just to keep the windows down and let the warm air hit you. You have to yell at each other to talk because the wind blowing over the cranked up Boston summer music is too f#%&ing loud. But the forecast says a storm is coming and we're in a hurry.

We stop off at Hannaford's for a brief shopping spree, pick up some water, wraps, peppers, onions, beer, mansushi, a battery-powered light-up Frisbee and other misc crap. Maybe do some brief packing. It's time to head to the mountain.

We arrive with the forecasted storm still strangely holding back. The usual final parking lot stuff-and-stow happens. Bailey gets in a few games of fetch in Squam's finger. We have eight people and it takes a little while to get ready. Eventually we're off up Butterworth Trail to the summit.

We arrive up top among swarms of mosquitoes. Who promptly get annihilated via napalm-flamethrower-strength Deep Woods "Off". Tents are pitched. One is freakishly lime. Another is a tent version of The Breakers. After much deliberation and engineering and triangulation and protractors and plumblines and survey work three of us manage to also get the big blue tarp up over the main site.

We build a fireplace. The men collect wood. Isaac talks about all the cool wood he could collect if he (A) had a bunch of wood-collecting equipment we don't have, and (B) would just get off his ass and collect wood.

And then it's Beer & Ledge Time.

 

Later on and a few crushed beers later we head back to let Erin dominate cutting and preparing some sausage wraps, and it unsurprisingly ends up being a rather late night of the usual woodland shenanigans.

Good times, all.

 

 

 
Click to enlarge

Three Wolf Moon

A week or two ago in became very clear that after suffering many devastating losses in my life over the years, and enduring extreme hardships when it comes to finding and holding onto women, the single reason why I've been such a failure is the lack of a good tri-wolf black t-shirt.

Fortunately Amazon.com was there to correct this issue with a t-shirt featuring not just one wolf, not two, but three f#%&ing wolves howling at the moon. With this my life was changed and may never again be the same.

See sample testimonials from satisfied Amazon customers:

Unfortunately I already had this exact picture tattooed on my chest, but this shirt is very useful in colder weather.   -Overlook1977

I had a two-wolf shirt for a while and I didn't think life could get any better. I was wrong. Life got 50% better. No lie.   -Seth G. Macy

I accidentally spilled a glass of Tuscan Whole Milk down the front of this shirt, and my soul was torn from my body and thrown into heaven by a jealous God.   -Chaon

Personally I feel the shirt is lacking without at least one narwhal doing a backflip. But many are the other fans.

 

 

Couple More From France

Thanks much to Caroline for passing  along more photos and video of the actual baptism.

One damn good-looking little French guy

 
Me screwing up Lulu's otherwise great photo by getting kicked in the nards

 
Lulu's view of the world

Losing The Fight

Walking home from seeing The Hangover at the Somerville Theater yesterday (easily one of the top 10 funniest movies ever) and going out afterward with TD, Steve and Dave and meeting up with Meg, Julie, Sarah and Sarah later, two things became very clear:

(1) The small, carnivorous red-flowered vines from The Ruins had finally reached as far as Somerville
(2) While we were all just having a nice time catching up at Dan and Meg's after the bars closed, the flowers had won. The war was over before it started and Somerville was a desolated wasteland.

The Invasion:

  

The Devastation:

 

  

After racing through the horror of the empty city listening to DLZ, I get home only to see that... it's waiting...

 

Tunes. Week of June 1.

Couple tunes that have been stuck in my head in the past week.

First I've had around awhile but never gave it the attention it deserved until it was used to great effect in a recent episode of "Breaking Bad". Easily the best show of 2009.

Get out of my territory. Hell yeah, Walter.

TV On The Radio, "DLZ"


Second one I couldn't embed and yeah, it's a little techy but sounded pretty decent while shooting about ninety pretty decent games of pool at The Beantown Pub last night. Click on the link below for it.

T.a.t.u, "All The Things She Said"


Last one here has been kicking around for awhile but I just found the video for it. And decided to use the non-video one because the video itself is just terrible. I need to see these guys live. And your friends say what is it you look like you've seen a ghost - stuck in my head since October.


The Airborne Toxic Event, "Sometime Around Midnight"

Last one's an old one, but somehow I just keep finding more NIN I love.


Nine Inch Nails, "Ruiner"

Dear Pixar

Thank God you're around to make movies as incredible as Up.

Went to see it tonight downtown with Isaac and his new roommate Alexis in digital 3D, and rarely have I come closer to pissing myself laughing so many times during a film. The Diet Coke the size of my head that I drank in the beginning didn't help with this, but still.

Somehow in ten minutes of almost no dialogue at the beginning you not only had built a loving couple's entire lifetime together, but you had us all almost in tears. I looked around the theater and the credits were barely gone but there was already sobbing coming from the back of the room. It definitely wasn't from me. Probably.

If only there were more movies like yours.

-Charlie

PS: Enough with the sequels, though. I'm sure Toy Story 3 and Cars 2 will be great, but we need more original stories like Up.

 

Massive Sausage Fest

Huge thanks to Tall Dan and Meg for throwing the Fourth Annual Sausage Fest in their back yard yesterday.

Despite all eight pounds of my giant sausage not ending up being particularly fit for going down anyone's throat, it was a decent first attempt and I will conquer the recipe at subsequent sausage festivals.

 
All eight pounds of Charlie's sausage. Yes. This is digusting. But showing great potential.


TD and the uncooked weight of Charlie's sausage, wrapped in a bacon lattice and smothered in barbeque sauce.

 
The finished product. I'm curious to hear what the hell Dan and Meg ended up doing with it. I'm guessing there were some fucking psyched raccoons last night.


Isaac and his girl Liz's hair


Kramer and the Raiche-Cassidys


TD, Carole and Kelly

Dan fixing the very appropriate testicle-tossing game.Turned out that after a rather steep learning curve (unlike Sarah), I wasn't terrible at this game. I may have to go buy it if I ever figure out what it's called.

 

Shana in the foreground, Australians in the background



A bunch of Madores


Daniella and papa

Day turned into night, there was a Winston appearance, more games played, cigars smoked. Good times.

Yes, guys, I still don't like Led Zeppelin. They insist upon themselves.

Goldfish Truck

Okay, despite my past opinions on Goldfish snack crackers (I still find Parmesan Goldfish measurably lacking in cheesiness), this Goldfish truck is pretty damn awesome, particularly from a marketing POV. I can't say I could physically restrain myself from immediately pulling over and buying Goldfish in bulk if this thing blew by me on the road.

 

Byrne Onstage

On Thursday 106 Hudson St. roommate Erin Byrne invited me and Demuth out to a show she was having at Sally O'Brien's. Never been to the place but pretty decent little pub off of Union Square.

I'd never heard Byrne sing, but damn, the girl has a seriously strong voice. Her friends were saying that the acoustics at the place weren't even that good and that when they are her tunes punch even harder. She did an acoustic set with her b/f Andrew Gravel, about 10-12 bluesey songs, some really good stuff in there but I could see her rocking upbeat songs even harder.

Byrne & Andrew

 
The Funkadites

After the set Andrew and his band The Funkadites did a set of their own which was fantastic. Andrew was killer on the guitar and owned most of the stage presence, but a couple covers his bassist did were kinda stellar.

Only downside was that a couple friends of the band had apparently brought their entire dance group along, who insisted on performing in front of the stage -- made it a little hard to just watch the music. Think the hippo ballet scene from Fantasia meets Bring It On.

Memorial Day, Actually

After a great night Saturday night, messed around at home with the sites on Sunday before heading back down to Block Island to catch the 5pm ferry. Ended up running into Marcus Picherri on the boat. Really good to see the dude, sounds like his whole family's doing well. Got out to the island and found it buried in the usual late-May fog.

Dinner that night was fantastic, parents were having the Hills and other friends over and Dad was making lamb, salad and lentils. Usually not a fan of any lamb that's not either a gyro or resurrected by Chuck Norris, but this was spiced just ridiculously well. Not to mention a fairly decent job with the presentation.

Headed out around 9:30 to meet up with Marta downtown, her and a friend of hers were up from New York and it ended up being a long night hitting the Albion and Yellow Kittens. Her, Nathaniel and I need to get on managing this year's party. Also had a huge shock finding out that my grandmotherly neighbor of 20+ years ago had in fact not passed away but was living in a nursing home in Westerly. Will definitely have to try to see her at some point.

Much later in the night we decided a fire at Mansion would be required for the evening, so we throw a bunch of pallets in the truck and head down the Neck. We're at the beach for ten seconds before the local volunteer environmental cop comes up and tells us to get lost. "No fires are happening down here tonight or any other night!". We shrug, get back in the truck, drive to the water to do a u-turn, come back up the beach and immediately the truck sinks into the soft sand and starts spinning its tires. God damn I hate Mansion Beach.

We try to dig it out for awhile but it's going nowhere. Marta drives me over to West Beach to see if there's anyone there to help but everyone's going home and none of my buddies are out. She takes me home so I can get the CJ, I head back, work for awhile, go back home and get a shovel and jack, work for awhile, get it out, it sinks in again immediately, I work some more. Finally at around 9am the truck's out and I'm driving home past early morning joggers and people heading to work.


What's up, Dawn.

After already being unstuck once.

I take the Tacoma to the marina and completely wash it down, take it home and vaccuum it, Dad gives me a ride back to the beach for the CJ and I come home and pass out for about three hours. Get up for lunch, do some serious brush cutting out in the yard, and then I'm on the 5pm ferry and manage to be asleep back in Boston by 10pm.

Just got a Facebook Wall post from Marta this morning saying "PARTY AT MANSION!". Funny girl.

Somerville Grilling, The House of Blues & The National. Summer Is A Go.

After pretty fantastic Friday night at The Joshua Tree here in Somerville listening to Carole DJ 80's tunes, I headed into Davis Square this morning with Isaac and his new girl Liz to meet up with Sarah and Dave Holmes, AKA The Australians. Sounds like a husband-wife torture ensemble. "Give us the codes or we shall have to call in... The Australians!" Looking forward to hanging with those guys up on Rattlesnake in a couple weeks.

 Anyway, we met up with them at McKinnon's to pick up some meats (I do love that place, thanks Ken), then all headed over to Kelly and Rich Raiche's driveway to pound Sam Adams Summer Ale, put down marinated chicken and get stared at by the Raiche's massive cat Izzy all afternoon with them, Carole, Sam, Britney, Kramer, Sparky, Jason and the rest. Great times, guys.

Around 6pm we all then make our way downtown to the new House of Blues (formerly The Avalon) near Fenway, which turned out to just be fantastic and not disappointing at all. It keeps the standing-up, open-bar vibe of the Avalon while just feeling much bigger. Plus we had the VIP seats with the closest balcony to the stage, looking out over all the crowd, and a just fantastic waitress who really needs to work everywhere I go.

So anyway, this guy Colin Stetson opens the show, doing insane and almost dirty things with a saxophone and bass sax that I've never seen nor heard done before. Like Isaac said, he was like a human beatbox, somehow reminding me of the way the polar bear god in The Terror plays Lady Silence's vocal cords by blowing down into her lungs. Check this out.

Matt Berninger from The National then walks out next and kicks off the show with a terrific new song. No clue what it was but it played well to the audience... smoother but still with the usual National buildup. They go on play most of their usuals interspersed with a few more new ones, which definitely sound different -- less angsty Matt, more of the full band. Felt like the producer had decided this next album is going to be their big public one.

Our view the whole show. Yeah.

 

The show ended with "Green Gloves", "Mr. November" and "About Today", though sadly no  "City Middle", "Karen", or "All The Wine". Steve, Erin and I walk over to TC's Bar, say what's up to Tony, threw down a couple Miller High Life's while rocking the Journey on the jukebox, then it's a cab ride home in the cool summer night to play a few cards out back and head in.

Today heading over to Georges and Ava's to see their now-almost-a-year-old daughter Farrah, then it's out to Block Island tonight to see all my summer folk. Not a bad kickoff to the summer.

I made a mistake in my life today
everything I love gets lost in drawers
I want to start over, I want to be winning
way out of sync from the beginning

You know I dreamed about you
for twenty-nine years before I saw you
You know I dreamed about you
I missed you for
for twenty-nine years

Forced Into Piracy

So before heading out today, I go to iTunes to buy the new Eminem album, which surprisingly sounds like it may not be awful after all. But it's not available on iTunes.

So I go to Amazon to download it. They only are selling the CD version. 

I try a couple other sites. It's nowhere to be found.

So screw it. I will not buy physical CDs again. Sorry, dude. I tried to give you my money.

YouTube Fatigue

Interesting how most of my friends and I have all gotten to the point where if someone just IM's over a YouTube link with no context around it, the recipient won't be bothered to click on it. We know it's going to be mildly amusing, sure. But laugh out loud hilarious or somehow fascinating? Improbable enough that we don't bother wasting the energy. I definitely haven't seen anything life-changing since I started writing in this blog.

Which then begs the question of why all the hype around YouTube back in 2005 and Google's later acquisition of them. YouTube's still rolling along, picking up massive content while being massively censored even more than ever, and they still seem to be making barely a dime. They add new features constantly, such as higher-resolution video and collaborative animations, but the basic user value-add of the site hasn't really changed in any significant way since launching in November '05.

What's the point of inflection where massive hype transforms simply into mild disappointment? Within the next two years Hulu, iTunes or another online video content provider is going to successfully make the leap to easily showing online video on normal and HD TVs.

When this happens, can anyone see YouTube continuing to provide any real value in its current form?

Remi Gaillard: N'importe Quoi

At one point last Wednesday night Mihail and I had another night of it, and in the middle of it he shows me this guy's videos. All except a few are shot in Montpellier, France, most are rather silly, but I challenge you to watch both through without laughing out loud. You cannot. You can't.

If you like either of those below definitely check out his others to the right.

Sat & Sun: Paris Zurich Home

Because of the booking difficulties I'd ended up still having my return flight home on Sunday leaving from Zurich, and while Irina was out of town for a college reunion, the girl left the key out at her place for me to crash there on Saturday night. Bad idea, trusting me like that.

Saturday morning I got up at Caroline and Valery's early to make the train out of Paris, and Valery was awesome enough to drive me to the Gare De L'est through the warmly rising city where locals were making the Scooter of Shame ride home all around us.

(It's on Caro and Valery now to come to Boston, and I'm very much looking forward to both of them getting here potentially sometime next year depending on where I be.)

Caught the many-houred TGV back to Zurich, got off there and made my way to Irina's place, did a little shopping at the local Swiss Coop. Think Home Depot meets The Dollar Store meets Shaw's. Got a cab back from there, messed with the porch a bit, showered, then headed out to a local place for dinner.

Turns out you can't just DO dinner in northern Zurich, as every damn place I walked by was closed. Finally found a gas station that was open way down the street that sold beer and groceries. I bought a few of each and headed back.

Yeah, I'm in a foreign country with exotic food but I buy s#%& from the gas station. The sun was setting, it was beautiful and warm as hell outside and I watched a little downloaded Lost on the laptop out on the porch while putting down some surprisingly decent pizza.

This place was closed.

All these places were closed.

This place wasn't closed but looked sketch. Less so when coming back here later at 3am.

Also sketch but at least I signed up for the local rugby team. I think.

Had a few beers after it got dark, took some photos for the blog, rocked the place with the surprisingly quiet and friendly Jamie, caught up with Isaac and Ken online (strange to be the one who was six hours later while people back in the states were getting ready to go out), then headed out into downtown Zurich to wander around for a few hours and meet a few locals.

Went for a jog the next morning on a stunningly warm day toward the nearby school, then packed up and headed out for the airport to get back the same plane at the same gate.

An eight hour flight, some pretty decent movies and a highly conversational Israeli dude later and Isaac's driving me back to Somerville from the airport like I never got on the plane. (Thanks much for the rides, dude.)

Friday: La Forêt de Compiègne

Friday got up early at Caroline's, grabbed the kids, packed some picnic baskets and grabbed some baguettes, then met up with her parents and sister at their place in Neuilly. After some complicated swapping of cars that I didn't understand we headed an hour and a half north of the city to the forest of Compaigne for a long day hike and picnic.

The treaty for the end of World War I was signed here and the forest absolutely had a great sense of peace about it. We spent about half an hours heading into the forest before stopping briefly for lunch, a little beer and building of "des cabines!" before heading out on the trails for real.


Okay, seriously?


Is that my godson?


That is definitely my godson.


If Abraham Lincoln had seen my log cabin he'd have been rips*#%.
Fortunately Lulu was far less judgmental than Lincoln.

From there we headed out for a good four hours (with a baby strapped to my gut for most of it -- I know now well how pregnant women feel). Though a long walk, the place felt serene enough to feel more like a massage for the soul. Except that here a Happy Ending was a tour of a 13th century church.











After getting the two grandparents to go back for the cars while the kids sat on our asses and waited to get picked up, it was a short drive to St. Jean-Aux-Bois to see the church. It's a little bizarre being inside something that was already four hundred years old when the first settlers came to Block Island, and all the stone was worn smooth by the countless thousands of lives that had passed through there.

Panorama of St. Jean-Aux-Bois, click to enlarge







We finally drove back into the city and dropped off Valerie and the kids, then Caroline and I headed out to a great little Portuguese place near her apartment, where we were served by an insane woman and two rather hot twin waitresses. Valery could not have been more gracious of a host all week, but it was nonetheless nice to have some time just to catch up with Caroline. We later made our way back after a couple carafes of white wine, some fairly decent cote du boeuf and an strong attempt by the Portugeuse to get us to dance.

Its distance from the center of the city aside, Boulogne has a lot going for it, not the least of which seems to be a rather special kind of diversity.

Thursday: INSEAD and Out

Friday morning awoke very pumped to go check out INSEAD in preparation for the MBA program. Mihail had been so kind as to let me borrow his car, as I'd been told that unlike HEC, the school was a good way outside of the city in a town on the edge of a large forest known as Fontainebleau.

Got up and asked if he wanted to go grab a croissant and some coffee, he said unfortunately he immediately had to head to work. So I grabbed a shower, ironed my suit, and the guy came back into the room with a full-on French breakfast containing OJ, coffee and no less than four massive chocolate croissants.

Mihail very worriedly put me through all the procedures necessary to prevent his car from exploding mid-autoroute, and once on the road the trip to the school was just amazing. Just a beautiful ride out there and terrific campus, but more importantly the program as described by our guide Andrew Bueno painted a view of the school has having a very strong focus on yes, the work, but moreover the whole experience, with a careful, intentional balance on extracurricular activities and small groups made up of students from very different backgrounds in an effort to create the most diverse conversations and viewpoints possible.

Our small tour group was probably a good cross-section of this, with myself from the US, an applicant from Japan, and another from the Netherlands (who had actually just driven down seven hours for the tour and was then heading back). More students apparently would have been on the campus, which was very quiet, but it was a break week for the school between sessions and most were away.

References? Check. GMAT? Check. Transcript? Check. Essays? Nearly check. A little last wrapup of the application and then it's fingers well crossed.

With the tour complete I headed back into the city to return his car to a very relieved Mihail -- though I think I may have gotten him a ticket from one of France's automated radar-based machines, we'll see -- and went to meet up with Caroline and Valery downtown.

The three of us grabbed dinner at a rather bizarre (bazaar?) Egyptain place near the Bastille, then headed north to the canals to a gypsy concert held in the belly of a barge on the Seine. Many cheap Trappist beers were put down and later we had a rather awesome return across the city on three of Paris's cheap rental bicycles. Which I absolutely warned Caroline not to rent.

A warning she was later unhappy to have ignored as we sped through traffic across the brilliant Friday Paris late night. :)

Tuesday: Downtown

Tuesday morning I felt a little slow but managed to get up and head downtown to meet Caroline for a nooner lunch. Meeting just outside the Louvre, we headed into one of the museum's hundreds of entrances and ended up eating at a Chinese mall cafe which was no different from Panda Express except that nothing was fried, everything was wilted, nothing satisfied my post-Monday craving for salt and grease, and everything was generally horrible. Probably too much to expect good hangover food in Paris.

While I'd intended to tour the Louvre afterward it turned out the place was closed Mondays in addition to Sundays in addition to Friday due to the Labor Day holiday. So Caro had to head back to work, and I spent the day losing myself walking through downtown Paris blasting Asia and Ozzy -- a surprisingly good way to see the city.

Raw panorama output of the Louvre, click to enlarge

Raw panorama output of the opposite side of the Louvre, click to enlarge


Pont Alexandre III, click to enlarge


Le Petit Palais, click to enlarge

Monday: Meeting The Mihail

First off, check out Autostitch. Great stuff -- just take a bunch of photos from all angles of a crowd or a dinosaur or mountain or something, put them all in one folder and select them all with the program, and it then runs a bunch of random computations and spits back out one big shot with everything blended together.

You just gotta be sure to not miss any spots or you'll get black filling, and if there's a car or something in one that's not in another. See panorama from Neuilly-Sur-Seine below or the ones of downtown Paris above.

Met up with Mihail Sotkov, my best friend from Bulgaria in 1997-1998 when I took a year off from Georgetown to work in the south of France doing community service and learning the language. Mikhail was in another school program, also liked beer specials and college girls, and as he spoke no English and I spoke no Bulgarian, being able to discuss each other's lives added an extra incentive to the classwork.

The bleached-blonde-headed Bulgarian nitwit I haven't seen since I was 21 picked me up in his fancy-shmancy Chrysler way out at the end of the Metro's 13 line, he threw a bottle of Jack Daniels at me, and took me back to the Median hotel here in Chatillon that he now assistant manages.

Upon arriving, we stowed our things in the room he crashes in during the week, and shows me on the hotel's PC-based security video system how two nights ago a dude in a motorcycle helmet with a handcannon had come in, tried to mug the Ecuadorian front desk clerk, but ended up leaving in frustration with the clerk couldn't care less about the gun and kept doing paperwork.

From there it got a little like old times, involving dinner, a little booze, a lot of effort to quickly regain French, discussion of which proper girl from my program he'd taken back to Bulgaria for Easter to meet his family without telling us, and the two of us later taking a train to the Champs d'Elysees where started at Charlie Birdy before hitting a few other local hotspots.

We spent a good amount of time catching up, and after a few hours that night very few of our more recent problems seemed highly important.

Hitting a tour of local hot spots, we learned about the swine flu from some Canadian women at an Irish pub called "The Pub" that I can't be bothered to find online, threw back a few kamikazes with an angry blonde Los Angelino whose aunt came to take her away, ended up almost swinging at a French company director who thought that the bar's theme made it okay to... act inappropriately to one of his colleagues, and a few other incidents I won't get into for fear of making myself look worse than usual. I do believe I Facebook messaged our good buddy Randy Strite from '98 Montpellier a good four times to give us a damn call but to no effect.

Later we all took a cab back past the Arc de Triomphe to Mihail's hotel, where he rigged up ladder access for us to the hotel's eighth-floor roof and view of all of downtown Paris. Great night.

Sunday: Becoming Un Parrain

Sunday morning we awoke, gathered my friend Caroline Morange and her husband Valerie Kim's children, and headed out for the baptism of her youngest, Alexandre -- also known as Sasha. I was given the lines I had to read as part of becoming a godfather, and after much stumbling of the pronunciation managed to get it down okay.

We met with Caroline's family and friends outside a small church in Neuilly-Sur-Seine where she grew up, which was just facing the park leading from the Arc de Triomphe to La Defense (see photo below), and headed in for a short, beautiful ceremony. Only falling down on the altar once, Sasha did marvelously, and his year-older sister Lulu was also extremely fired up. Me, I was nervous as hell reading the lines in front of a church full of the French but since I couldn't understand any criticism and ignored all their giggling at my accent it worked out fine.

L'Eglise a Neuilly -- click to enlarge


My new godson, Alexandre "Sasha" Morange-Kim

Elodie, Sasha and Caroline


Lulu and Sasha


Somehow they got Larry David to play the priest


Caroline's brother Phillipe, Sasha and M. Morange


This very-much-not-a-vampire kid from another group adored the holy water


... so much so that he had no problem drinking it


Lulu wanted in on the holy water action


Sasha passed out afterward

Later in the day Caroline's parents threw an afternoon party at their place nearby, where I caught up with her parents, her younger sister Marie, her younger brother Phillip and his fiancee, Caro's friend Elodie, and many others. Everyone was incredibly kind, and I was able to dodge most of the "how many children do YOU have?" questions by focusing on watching Sasha and changing diapers.

Ended the day back at Caro's, tired but happy -- for a reason to come visit France I've definitely had worse. Can't wait to see Sasha and his family again Thursday evening.

Friday & Saturday: Zurich to Paris

Got into Zurich around 11am Friday completely fried after all night flight.

Irina surprised the hell out of me by meeting me at the airport, and took me to pass out at her place to the tune of her very pretty but insanely loud leopard-cat Jamie's demon-yowling while she had to head back to work. Cat was named strangely the same as my old also very loud and also rather batshit-insane stripey-cat Jamie.

After a brief unconsciousness I managed a bit of a jog later that afternoon at a public track next door, only to get repeatedly and mockingly smoked by a five-year-old on a toy bike every time I did a lap. Little Swiss bastard. Irina came back from work a bit later, we headed out on the town for dinner to Angkor, an Asian place where the crispy roast duck in brown sauce was insane.

Next morning was calm and strangely domestic, and later with some help she helped get me on a two-leg train from Zurich to Paris. Seeing the girl after almost nine months was not easy but definitely worth the night. I later had to switch trains to the TGV in Strasbourg on the way to Paris, though not after passing through a singularly well-named (if not surprisingly unpopulated) town on the way:

Got into Paris around 8:30pm without hassle, then ended up getting lost near the Gare De L'Est and wandering for an hour through twilight Paris before finally taking two broken metros to where I was supposed to meet Caroline and Valerie. There we grabbed dinner at a beautiful little restaurant near station Grand Boulevard with an amusing (for a French chick) waitress and more duck since I was still missing the canard from the night before, and then managed to be home and passed out all in the same room at their place by midnight, ready for the baptisme the next day.

I slept for 11 hours straight.

Kings of Leon

Pregaming before concert with Kelly, Rich & Carole at 973 Commonwealth, the restaurant formerly known as T's Pub. This place is horrible. There are a ton of tables, and the place is packed, but there's no wait list so it's just a mad free-for-all anytime any table gets up. It's like they sucked all the soul out of a high school cafeteria in Des Moines.

At least the show was pretty solid. Now just looking forward to The National at the end of May. "Who the f#%& is Karen?!"

Flounder Inn Photo Trip

Headed out to Block Island yesterday with Isaac to see the folks prior to next weekend's shenanigans, but moreso to have him take some photos for use with the Flounder Inn website I've been tinkering with.

Ferry ride over was rather awesome, waves were pounding in from the southeast and the boat was bucking it. Got out there and had a great if not somewhat morbid dinner with the parents' friends, then headed out with Isaac to Club Soda where we ran into Nathaniel and Kara, Charlie Millikin and Teresa Bendokas. The latter of whom is not only getting hitched in three weeks, but was actually rocking two frickin' rings. Jeremy Brown was there fronting his hardcore island band 13 Miles Out, one tune inspired by Boxing Helena was particularly badass. Later ended up getting rioted at pool at Kittens by Chrissie and Kurt before calling it a night.

Next morning Isaac managed a few hundred photos of the house inside and out, Carol and Henry Hill stopped by to model. A few of them (below) look amazing -- the kid has real skills. Got back to the 'Ville with zero issues, now just have my work cut out dealing with all this damn site content.