I don’t have a whole lot to report, but there are a few odds and ends I can prod into a ramble.
My quest to go out and be social for twelve consecutive days has failed. The failure is less complete if you count going out past midnight as credit for the following day, but even so my goal has not been met. Still, I’ve been much less of a recluse since Christmas, and hopefully I can keep some of that momentum.
Last night I went out with Angelo to watch American Football. In my previous experience going to Zlatá HvÄ›zdá for football playoffs, the place has been packed to the gills. Not so last night. Maybe it’s because the first game didn’t start until after 10:30, maybe it’s because there wasn’t a big-name east-coast team playing. For whatever reason, the bar was pretty empty as we watched Angelo’s team, the Atlanta Falcons, take on the Phoenix Cardinals (formerly the St. Louis Cardinals, and apparently before that, the Chicago Cardinals).
“Dirty Birds! Dirty Birds!” Angelo would chant, rising from his seat on big plays to do a little bird dance. The Dirty Birds lost. After that the San Diego Chargers played, and surprisingly the bar planned to stay open for the game. Happily for the good guys, I was just too tired to stay and watch. I went over to my brother’s place and crashed where the heater can keep up with the weather. Someone should enjoy the heat while he’s in the US.
The next day, Sunday, I got on a tram without a ticket, knowing full well that Sundays are a big day for tram enforcement. The tram was right there, I didn’t want to spend time standing in the cold waiting for the next one, so I didn’t find a place to buy a ticket. I stepped onto a tram full of ticket cops. Dangit, I KNOW I saved the telephone number that lets you buy a ticket via SMS. I don’t use it because I generally don’t need the full-price ticket. But what did I save the number under? I never found it. I got busted. Bummer. Normally the tram cops pass me by even when they’re busting people, but I probably had a guilty look as I tried to cover my ass.
Since last night I’ve been Internet-free at my apartment; right now I’m heading over to the Little Café Near Home to see if the gods of digital communicatioin are smiling there.
It’s kind of funny to name a two-year-old tradition “classic”, but in this case the name works. Here’s the thing: They played a professional hockey game outdoors. Last year I was in the US and watched some of the game on TV and there was just something so undefineably cool about it that I was glad to see them do it again this year. Growing up where I did, I thought skating indoors was the exception, not the rule. I used to skate occasonally as a kid, but I’ve never skated indoors.
That’s why the “classic” in the title works — everyone, especially the players, are taken back to the old days, skating as a kid. Everyone is so pumped up that the magic of the game even comes over the radio. The players were pumped, the crowd was nuts, and the announcers were having a blast saying things like “the teams are now going into the dugout for the intermission.” The game was at Wrigley Field, a baseball venue that itself has a lot of history.
Cool thing that may matter only to me: After the game, the players stayed on the ice and shook hands. This usually only happens at the end of a playoff series, but it was just a mark of how special this game was that the players decided to add a little more to the tradition. You know from now on the Winter Classic will end with the teams shaking hands.
For a league that seems to do everything wrong, they got this one completely right.
Apologies to Squirrley Joe; I was pulling for the resurgent Blackhawks. They lost, but I thought their radio play-by-play guy was awesome. No gimmicks, but never at a loss for the perfect verb to describe exactly how the puck was handled. And when he said “Shot!” it made my heart stop beating until he told me the result. He’s got to be in my top three favorite hockey play-by-play guys, and that has to be the most difficult job in sports announcing.
The view out the window, looking out upon the skeletal remains of fireworks.
As I write this I’m sitting at a Chinese restaurant, sipping tea. It is cold outside (forecast: colder); there is a light dusting of snow, but not enough to cover the bits of charred paper, red and yellow, scattered all about. The remains of fireworks. Stacked just outside my window are several large pyrotechnic skeletons, bones of flaming dinosaurs (or dragons, I suppose) that once roamed the neighborhood. One I can see has 100 launch tubes, each about an inch in diameter. I bet that looked pretty cool going off.
I mention the remains of bombs and mortars lying about for perspective; this is a quiet neighborhood. I have never been to the crazy festivities downtown, and this year I decided I needed to see it once. (“Wear eye protection,” several people advised me. “Keep your hair covered.”) My plan was to go more as a journalist than as a reveler, to record the craziness and report it to you, faithful reader. I even decided to take the good camera.
My neck is stiff now. Yesterday I spent a while in bed wondering why, until I remembered that somewhere in the night I tried head-banging to see how it worked with my hair. I couldn’t see the result, so now I have a stiff neck and I’m no wiser. In fact, New Year’s Day was spent in true MR&HBI fashion, happy that January 2th, New Year’s Day (observed), is there so one can do all the things one would have done on January 1st had one been able. Like, for instance, writing this blog episode. But I digress.
Plans often change, and New Years’ Eve plans are less stable than most. I popped zlato a message as darkness fell, asking how plans were shaping up. Just like that I was invited over to Izzy’s place for a party.
This was not a wild party by any means; Izzy, zlato and a friend I haven’t made a name up for yet have formed a band of sorts, and the party almost immediately turned into a band practice with the other guests encouraged to participate. I spent a lot of time on washboard. As the night wore on and the champagne started taking effect my confidence on the instrument grew, but I didn’t do very well on my solo. Still, good times.
The males at the party were far more interested in the music, and as midnight approached the women-folk began to agitate for going out to a bar. One of them worked at a good place that was an easy walk. I told them my plan to go down to the center, a move universally regarded as a Bad Idea, but each of them had a story of singed clothing and reckless abandon (“I have a picture where one is going right over the camera, right at my head.”), and you don’t get stories like that sitting in a nice warm bar.
Then again… I like nice warm bars, and it was cold outside. I was having fun in the present company, and I as I don’t get out much I thought it would be good to hang longer and solidify myself as part of the group. Musician-to-be-renamed-later suggested that we stay behind and keep making music and just let the girls go out, but eventually we all (except zlato) saddled up and headed to Bukowski.
On the walk over to the bar, loud explosions reverberated up and down the streets. Intersections were commandeered for impromptu fireworks displays, while roaming bands of teenagers lit of very loud bombs. Even the strings of smaller firecrackers were quite a bit louder than the things you find in the US. I think it’s safe to say that in the ten-minute walk we heard a significant explosion nearby every fifteen seconds and more distant reports were more or less constant. I wondered once more what it would be like in the parts of town where things were crazy.
Bukowski was indeed a good place to go. It was crowded but not packed; in fact there was a very comfy-looking back room that was completely empty. I have no idea why we didn’t take it. Instead, after a period of bumbling around we wound up packed around a couple of tables, along with two Polilsh guys.
The very first thing the Polish guys asked was whether Izzy and I were a couple. I’ve been hit on by enough guys over here that I didn’t think much of it; I just shrugged it off, stated in a joking fashion but quite clearly that I was herterosexual, and left it at that. No worries about sending the wrong signals this night. The only reason I bring up the incident at all is because it might have some bearing oh what happened later.
We sat, we drank, and we were feeling jolly. The annointed hour arrived, and we sang Auld Lang Syne with more gusto than talent. I was talking to Still-unnamed-musician, his main squeeze, and Izzy when another of our party, whom we shall call Malcom, shouted, stood from the table and grabbed a bottle to brandish as a weapon. In a great spray of champagne he brandished it at the Poles. It was about then that the table was toppled over, dumping various liquids (including candle wax) over Izzy and me as the table’s cargo fell to the floor with a great crashing of glass.
For the record, I saved my beer.
It took several people several minutes to restrain Malcom, who remained insane. Finally a group of friends and other bar patrons got him disarmed and outside. One regular closed the door and leaned on it to keep Malcom from coming back in. That was only partially successful; Malcom did not come back in but he mortally wounded the door. Through all this, the Poles sat quietly. “A bad joke,” one said to me as I got my things together. Could it have been as simple as a gap between Polish and English humor? I don’t know; I suspect not. I wasn’t paying any attention to that end of the table at all, but people who were around them said the Poles were needling Malcom all night. My guess is that Malcom doesn’t react to comments that seem to question his sexuality the same way I do. Just a theory; I know Malcom only a tiny bit better than I know the Poles.
I have since hatched a likely-harebrained theory about the Poles. When they started joking about me being gay, I simply assumed they were gay and were trying to hit on me. I still think I was right. Poland, I’m guessing, between Slavic machismo and Catholic influence, is probably a tough place to be gay. I could easily imagine that in that situation a person might use insults as pickup lines, a false front of homophobia to allow the subject to be broached at all. (Sociology majors please note: don’t use me as a reference in your work. I’m just talking out my ass. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
Anyway, we left. Malcom was long gone; management wanted to know who was gong to pay for the door. While I sympathized with the bar owner, I wasn’t going to volunteer to pony up the 3,000 Kč for the door repair. (Now that I think about it, the fact the manager had a ready number makes me think this kind of thing has happened before.) Once clear of Bukowski, we discussed what the rest of us should do next. Another bar seemed to be the right answer. “I’m all adrenalated,” I declared.
We walked through the banging, popping, whistling night to another bar, which had a small room just off the dance floor that was unoccupied. This time we made the smart choice. We sat, Izzy brought beers (in plastic cups), I danced a bit until the music changed from punk to big band. After a while the couples started acting like couples and I knew it was time for me to go.
I walked back to my brother’s place, but realized that if I stayed there I would have no computer. No computer, no happy new year chat with That Girl. A walk home would be good for me, I thought, a chance to metabolize some of the alcohol in my blood. The perfect timing of the night tram and the cold night air quickly undermined that resolution. Home then, on tram 51, to my cold cold apartment.
So far my quest to get out and interact with my friends has been gonig pretty well. I’m fortunate right now that some old friends are back in town, visiting from pretty much the opposite side of the planet. If you drilled directly through the center of the Earth from Prague would you wind up in New Zealand? Is there a web site to show you the opposite side of the Earth from any point? If not, why not? It would be trivial to make. Easier to make than to find, I think.
It was cold today, but a friendly, dry cold. Ice in patches, but no snow. Sunshine. M2&L&m picked me up at the bus stop where I waited, my hands getting cold as they held my book. I was early to get there and they were not. They have an infant. Time works differently.
Lunch was at a restaurant in a Vietnamese market and was quite yummy. The smallest of my hosts, the one only half a year old, watched me with a cool detachment. I’m told she smiles at almost everyone. Almost. Conversation centered around the child. Not surprisingly, she is above average. The parents (one of whom is Chinese) will happliy pay extra for toys not manufactured in China. Baby-therm struck them as a brilliant idea that they would happily pay for. I really should do something with that.
After lunch we drove back to the flat they are borrowing, and while the the parents were dealing with the logistics of getting child and critical groceries purchased and up the stairs I repaired to a humble bar near their place. Surprisingly this humble hospoda is a WiFi Free establishment. Just need a password. Probably won’t ask.
***
Another good day of talking over beers. When speaking with M2 politics is inevitable, and illuminating. Our biggest disagreement: he doesn’t like any politician willing to raise taxes. I would rather pay the taxes now than borrow (stealing liquidity from the market, by the way — there’s a bit of a problem there right now). M2 said it was easier for a politician to spend tax money than borrowed money, but as I ponder this now, I realize that the exact opposite it true. It is much easier to spend borrowed money, where the accounting comes later, than tax revenue, where people feel the hurt now. When you tax, people might say no. Borrow-and-spend, the Republican approach to finance, is cowardly. Wish I’d managed to articulate it better tonight. But enough of that.
At the bar there was a really cool dog, mostly German Shepherd, but big for the breed (still a puppy) and with long silvery hairs accenting his coat. He was all right. We got along great. I’m pretty sure the pup agreed with my views of fiscal policy.
I dropped zlato a line in the afternoon, and he suggested the Globe cafe/bookstore for our hanging-out venue. He had some credit there, a reward for an mp3 party he’d hosted. He also had no money, so the venue was a pretty easy call.
I was on the metro when I got the text message: the Globe was closed. We met instead at a nice Gambrinus pub called Propaganda, just up the street. It was a pleasant evening; there’s always something interesting to talk about when zlato’s around, whether it’s the use of dashes and semicolons, books, flexibility of beliefs in the context of Shinto, or the female of the species. He loaned me a book, Hypnotic Language (though he hadn’t planned to), that I’m looking forward to reading.
I ended up staying out pretty late. Time just flew by, as they say. Propaganda is a congenial place. Friends of zlato came and went. zlato proffered quick in-bar massage to a couple of people (he’s trained for that stuff), and my muscles were jealous. The waiter is apparently studying the art, and some conversation ensued. It was a night of stuff like that.
The journey home was pleasant, a combination of tram and hoof; temperatures were solidly below freezing but that just felt right. The night tram had the right mix of people napping in their seats and others still hoping to find the next great place to party. Alas, no dogs in plaid.
I’ve been even more reclusive that usual lately, and I’ve decided to give myself a challrnge that may prove substantially more diffucult than writing a novel in thirty days — instead the challenge is to get out and see friends twelve consecutive days. Just being in Little Café Near Home working while people are around doesn’t count; I actually have to interact. In fact, I should probably make a rule that LCNH doesn’t count, or I can only count it once, or something like that. I’m making this up as I go along. The goal is to break my bad habit of finding reasons not to go out when friends invite me, and maybe even come up with my own plan from time to time.
Today’s kickoff was easy; I was invited to a family dinner. Historical trivia: “Good King Winceslas” is not a Christmas carol, but a boxing day song. The 26th of December is St. Stephen’s day. While there were no Vaclav’s (rhymes with Winceslas, who was Bohemian) at the dinner, it was still a festive (and belly-busting) affair. Mmmm… duck and knedliky (potato dumplings). Homemade cookies. No carp. One bit of bad planning: I wore my “nice” blue jeans. They’re nice because I don’t wear them much. I don’t wear them much because they’re a bit on the snug side. Not the right outfit for gluttony. Whatever the reason, I was a little concerned when I declined more duck that I might hurt my host’s feelings. I was stuffed.
It was a relaxed and pleasant dinner, some conversation in English and some in Czech, and then it was home to take a nap. (One topic of discussion as dinner wound down: the amount of time different animal species spend sleeping. It’s good to be a lion.)
So day one of Twelve Days of Social is a success! I really don’t know how I’m going to pull all of them off. New Year’s Eve I’ll be going down to the center of town, which I’m told is completely crazy. You know all those warnings on fireworks? They will be disregarded. “Wear eye protection” is a common piece of advice. Not really my kind of thing, but worth seeing once. (At this point it’s such pyrotechnic madness in my imagination that I’m probably heading for disappointment.) Anyway, anyone who reads this is welcome to join me. We can meet at the statue of Winceslas. (Did you see how I brought that back around to where I started? Not bad, huh?)
I dawdled just a little too long this morning, then was barely behind the curve all afternoon in search of a meal. It culminated at 4:01 pm at a McDonalds that closed at 4:00 (my phone still said 3:59, but I was in no position to argue), followed closely by my arrival at the big “always open” store that also closed at 4.
I headed back to my neighborhood, and was happy to see the run-down večerka (večer means evening, a večerka is a store that keeps long hours) that supplies the drunks in my neighborhood was still open even as their competition closed. I entered and thought I had come to the wrong place. Fruit? A variety of food? Efficient use of space? No bums? The store is under new management. All that, reasonable prices, and my favorite cookies. I am feasting tonight!
But before I go home I decided to have a little christmas cheer at one of the only places open in my neighborhood, the non-stop sports bar that almost never puts sports on the TV. I think there’s a big fotbal (rhymes with soccer) match on right now, but instead we’re watching a czech-budget film that features clever demons dragging greedy people down to hell.
Speaking of movies as I ramble on, last night I watched Límonadove Joe, (rhymes with “He-man Otto-vey Yo-way”), a Czech western filmed in 1964. Until I typed that date I had not put the film in the context of the politics of the time. The hero, Lemonade Joe, is shamelessly capatalist. So shamelessly that it circles back around and becomes irony, but then loops back around again. It is a silly movie; perhaps a precursor to Rustler’s Rhapsody (which is funny as hell). It takes place in a rough-and-tumble Arizona town, and opens with an extended brawl in the Trigger Whiskey Saloon. The bar is owned by Mr. Badman. Then Mr. Goodman and his beautiful daughter come to town, reformers with a message of abstinence.
Conflict ensues, and Lemonade Joe arrives. He drinks only KoloKola. (“Lemonade” is a generic term for soda here.) He kicks some ass with ease, makes everyone want to drink KoloKola, awards the distribution rights for the drink to the Goodmans, and moves on. Lemonade Joe is a crusader for justice and a shill for KoloKola. One of my favorite bits was when two drunks stagger out of the Trigger Whiskey Saloon to have a gunfight. They are plastered beyond competence and after fumbling around they laugh, embrace, and head back into the bar, their pistols still lying in the road. Not long after, once they are converted to KoloKola, they head out for a duel and shoot each other. “No need to call the doctor when they’re drinking KoloKola!” someone proclaims.
The ending is apparent from a long way off, but you have to respect the way they went for a staggering pile of clichés heaped up with reckless gusto, with a coating of hyperbole served sideways with irony. And when it’s all over, neither good nor evil triumphs, in true czech fashion. There is a winner, but I won’t tell you who.
On another note, there really should be a Trigger Whiskey Saloon here in Prague. Everyone knows the movie. Maybe there is one. If there isn’t, the Czechs aren’t as opportunistic as I thought.
There’s not much more I can say about this. It’s an armored car with a cozy interior, accent lighting, and a fancy sound system. Seats five comfortably in even the seediest of neighborhoods. It’s only $20K, and if you use the link to order I get a few hundred bucks of that! It’s like two gifts in one! Get one for all your friends.
I should point out that I’m a year late stumbling on this gift; Matthew Baldwin of Defective Yeti first wrote about it last year in this column.
This evening I picked another book off fuego’s shelves, this one a putative classic. The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale
I was reading along, and I hit a section where I really got the joke. Which makes me wonder if there are other sections where I don’t get the jokes. I suspect that many of the character descriptions and actions are steeped in irony that is often lost on me because the vocabulary (and simple Englishness) used to describe them impedes my understanding. This isn’t a comedy by any means, but I think that wry undercurrent is what gives the story life. I just wich I could understand it a little better.
I get the same feeling sometimes with Japanese literature (and cartoons), that there are veins of humor and symbolism that I can detect but cannot fully appeciate. In a way that’s pretty cool; it defines a new area I can learn stuff. Happily, I can still laugh at things like nonsensical street numberings. Some things will never change in London Town, and Conrad deals with the subject with a dry wit that permeates the entire book. His portrayal of ‘revolutionaries’ is not very flattering, to say the least, and many of the good guys don’t come off that well either.
This story came out in what must have been a great time to be literaturati. The novel as an art form was changing dramatically; I mentioned it a while back when speaking of The Great Gatsby, and this work just adds to the muddle of those decades. There’s a couple of decades there where What A Novel Is was no longer clearly defined, and a few writers shook off convention and told good stories their own way. This one has a lot of devices, like non-linear storytelling, that I was surprised to find in something of this era. (Maybe non-linear storytelling was common then. I’m certainly not a expert, but I associate things like that with much more recent literature.)
The story has a slyness which I’m really enjoying. People are working at cross-purposes; even the best of the good guys has a personal agenda. Perhaps the bomb maker has the purest (in the sense of not being diluted) of intentions. I haven’t finished reading yet, but I will soon.
Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle
And here it is. The ‘w’ indicates that I did some writing there. The definition of ‘bar’ can be a tricky one; in this case it is a place that I spent time drinking alcoholic beverages not accompanied by a meal. (If I ate, then lingered and drank, that counts as a bar.)
Bars:
At the beginning of Bangkok 8: A Novel
That, of course is itself an oversimplification. The two are sent to tail an American marine. Two hours later the marine is dead in an unlikely fashion, trapped in a car with a bunch of poisonous snakes on yaa baa, the local amphetamine coctail. One of the cops dies trying to save the american. It is the sort of thing an arhat would do — a buddhist saint. The other cop, Sonchai, is devastated by the loss of his soul brother. It is seen as perfectly natural that he will kill those responsible for his partner’s death.
This doesn’t go over so well with the Americans charged with investigating the death of the marine. Sonchai has had extensive experience dealing with the west; his mother was a prostitute who was kept by a succession of western men in Europe and the United States. Even so, the female FBI agent sent to work with him is a source of mystery and frustration. She, in turn, is baffled by the way the one clean cop in Bangkok idolizes his boss, a gangster in cop’s clothes.
Sonchai is an intelligent man, very observant, who can see his own past lives and feel the histories of the people around him. This does not strike him as odd or even particularly noteworthy. It’s not some secret power he uses to solve cases. It’s just an empathy he has that lets him see below the surface of the people he meets, allowing him to reach conclusions that would be difficult to arrive at logically.
Obviously, the clash between western and eastern thought is a big theme in this story. This theme is made most obvious in the context of the sex trade. Prostitutes, brothels, minor wives, and other more disturbing forms of people selling their bodies for money, security, or even love abound, and give ample opportunity to contrast cultural responses. Sonchai’s own feelings on the subject are very complicated, and are almost as confusing to his countrymen as to westerners.
There are times when the author gets a bit preachy about the subject, and unfortunately one of the preachiest times is the last chapter of the book. It is a satisfying last chapter on some levels, but it actually embraces the very patness the previous chapter openly rebelled against, which is disappointing. The actions of one of the characters in the last chapter defied reason.
Last chapter notwithstanding, this was a really good read. I like stories that effectively portray a view of life different than mine, in such a way that it makes complete sense. This story succeeds admirably on that scale. In addition, it’s not a half-bad mystery. There are a lot of different forces in conflict with one another (some of whom never emerge from the shadows, which is cool), and its got old alliances, betrayals, gut-wrenching evil, and revenge. Not everyone is completely sane.
It’s really not a thriller, thought there are plenty of tense moments, and even some intense ones. The author does an excellent job communicating the extremity of situations (some very bad) without being gratuitous. You see enough to fill in the blanks. I like that in a story. This book was a fun read with plenty of food for thought, and if you don’t mind things getting a little gritty sometimes (although not nearly as explicit as many other things I’ve read lately), then you might want to give this one a try. I’m sure glad I did.
Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle
