DENVER, CO-

Greetings from the Mile High City. I managed to secure a press credential for the Democratic National Convention and will be here all week, serving as an official political correspondent for TNB.

The flight from LA to Denver was relatively uneventful. Two hours, up and down. Very little turbulence. I sat there listening to my iPod in a state of slack-jawed catatonia. The week leading up to the convention was an unholy exercise in sleep deprivation, a mad scramble to make all necessary preparations before departure. I’m running on an average of about four hours of sleep per night.

Last night I got three-and-a-half.

I am filing this report from a buddy’s house on the outskirts of downtown. Everything is about to officially begin. There is a fever in the air. An impending metamorphosis. Just a few blocks away, amid a tangle of skyscrapers, Denver is transforming into an altogether different beast.

(more…)

ASTORIA, NY-

As I was watching the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics on television, I recalled the moment seven years ago when Beijing won the Olympic bid.

At the time I was living in Beijing and working as an English-language copyeditor for China Central Television (CCTV), which billed itself as an international news channel with “timely, accurate, and objective” news. As one of the several foreign experts there, my job was to coax passable news stories from awkward translations and naked propaganda. More often, it was like trying to spin straw into gold.

(more…)

ATLANTA, GA-

August.

The ass end of summer.

The time of year when I’m slogging through the drudgery of everyday life: the commuting, the second-only-to-L.A. traffic of Atlanta, the smog, the latest Mexican drug-trafficking hub that is Gwinnett County, the belligerent assholes in their giant SUVs with the faded “We’re Proud of You” and “Support Our Troops” magnetic ribbons, the tragic irony of which is no longer worth criticizing or satirizing.

I’ve always preferred the muted light of an overcast day; everything looks calm and friendly in the filtered light, which is strange since I lived in Florida for the first 28 years of my life. You’d think I’d be accustomed to sunshine. But in Florida we had afternoon thunderstorms that skuttled in from the gulf every day like clockwork. I adored those gray cumulonimbi.
(more…)

BOULDER, CO-

A while back, I had a shot at enlightenment. And despite the fact that I live right outside of Boulder, CO - the enlightenment capital of the universe with the exception of Sedona and perhaps the chocolate aisle of the World Market - I cannot say that I have yet had the privilege of sitting in God’s palm. So when the opportunity presented itself, I jumped at it.

I was living on a small island in Hong Kong - already the consequence of playing chicken with Fate - when I met Jack. Jack lived down the street from me and was the friend of a friend. He is short, has sandy blond hair and comes from Liverpool. (Read: cute with an accent).

He looks me over, waiting for our mutual friend to arrive and extends an invitation that would change my life.

(more…)

SARANAC LAKE, NY- 

The plan might have been flawed from the start.

What you might have seen, if you were driving along Highway 84 in Montana that day was a Subaru Outback rental car so new it had no license plates, followed by a Toyota pickup circa 1982, so old it had no shocks and no fixture on which to hang the license plate.

Seven innertubes undulated in the wind, occasionally breaking free and flapping against the rusted side panels of the truck.

You might have been cursing their slow progress or witnessed the convoy pulled over on the side of the road, a huddle of muscled women trying to retie the load with a single, thin rope.

(more…)

PARIS, FRANCE -

Raffaele says those home for the summer never order water at Il Fosso. Instead they ask for empty bottles and take them out to the spring where the water comes cold and sweet. He says it reminds them of their former lives.

He says in the evening serpents glide across the road, that there’s snow in winter, that here it’s not people you meet but characters.

Raffaele says that the village over there humbly glittering in the night, the one up at the end of the valley, is the town whose name no one will pronounce for fear of evil.

He says he doesn’t even know the name himself but I don’t believe him. It’s “that place” he says.

We stand quietly looking out across the dark at the glow of “that place” where once there lived a sorcerer.
(more…)

I’ve just moved.

Not just houses, but cities and entire lives. It’s exciting and new, a bit like the theme song from the Love Boat, but with no Gopher, no dancing girls and no stopover in Rio.

Bummer!

For posterity’s sake I kept a bit of a journal of my first week in San Francisco and have decided to share it as a peek into the inner sanctum of my life. I’d call you all voyeurs for reading, but in actuality I’m just a hideous narcissist who wants to show you photos of my closet.

(more…)

GRAND BLANC, MI-

The American dollar is worthless garbage.

That’s about it.

However, I suppose I must provide further details as to why I reneged on my promise to leave the country. I owe that much. Apparently, I owe everyone something. I’m pretty sure I’m collecting interest on myself. I’m definitely more interested in myself, but then, I’m a misanthrope, with four or five exceptions. As Lautreamont’s Maldoror put it, we’re breathing corpses. That’s why I smoke.

(more…)

THE DEEP SOUTH-

This is a time of hope

for something greater than ourselves

to save ourselves

from ourselves

a time of dreams and dying

and dreams dying

(more…)

MALLORCA, SPAIN-

A boy of eight or nine learns to dance with his kite.

He sets it down in the sand, turns, and scampers barefoot and shirtless along the two string lines, dipping low to scoop up the red handle and the blue handle.

He composes himself, steps back, hands at shoulder height, and jerks the handles down, setting flight to the orange trick kite.

Mediterranean blue backs up his Spanish skin.

I watch from a beachside café, my bike locked to a nearby post.

(more…)

LOS ANGELES, CA-

I got inside of another taxicab last night and was stunned when, about three quarters of the way through the ride, the cabdriver started asking me about my innards.

“You know what a bladder is?” he said to me.

“A bladder?” I said.

“Yeah, a bladder,” he said.

My wife was seated on my left, and she repeated my question aloud for the sake of overall clarity.

“You want to know what a bladder is?” she said.

“Yeah,” said the cabdriver. “I want to know, like, where it’s located in the body.”

“I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me that before,” I said. (more…)

PARIS-

Go to any movie theater in France right now, and the longest line will be for a fish-out-of-water comedy called Bienvenue Chez les Ch’tis (Welcome to the Land of the Ch’tis).

The movie tells the story of Philippe, a post office manager who gets reassigned from a sunny town in Provence to cold Bergues, a small village in Nord Pas-de-Calais, in the extreme north of France, home to a weird people who call themselves Ch’tis.

Philippe’s new friend Antoine, along with a cast of wacky locals, welcome the newbie, teaching him how to speak Ch’ti (which to my American ears sounds like drunk French, the ‘s’ sound becoming ‘sh’, the end of each sentence punctuated with a sound somewhat like an angry duck’s quack).

Philippe, at first utterly aghast at the prospect of having to spend two years in this strange land where torrential rains start at the border and the residents breakfast on bread first slathered in pungent cheese, then dipped in chicory-flavored coffee, eventually learns to speak Ch’ti like a local and ends up loving the place.

When it’s time for Philippe to return home to the south of France, he is predictably sad to go.

Antoine explains to him the local adage that “People only cry twice in Nord Pas-de-Calais. When they arrive, and when they leave.” (more…)

MIAMI, FL-

I am really hungover.

I stayed up late last night, doing blow and talking shit.

“When in Rome….”

Miami makes me behave like this guy-

Of course, I’m only joking. In actuality, here in Miami, I tend to be act more like most of the other residents. The blue rinse and pinochle set. But without the blue rinse. Or the pinochle.

My time here has been lovely. Two weeks of sun and friendship, late nigh (more…)

GULF BREEZE, FL-

So. Here I am in the new place.

Crickets chirp. A tumbleweed rolls by.

(more…)

Interstate-10

(more…)