adrian is rad

I’ve been really enjoying going through and reading a number of the pieces on this list of best of journalism 2009. Possibly my favorite is the Michael Lewis piece on the financial collapse of Iceland.

My pony is trotting off into a field of bulls. He is not supposed to. He is supposed to be going down the steep hill. Vincent is yelling instructions.

His name is Power; I like to think of him as POWER. We’ve been walking along a flat dirt path now for a few miles. It’s been easy; surprisingly easy if you consider this is the first time I can remember riding a horse. I’m starting to think I’m good at this. Perhaps I’m preternaturally gifted at riding horses.

But I’m not. It’s just been easy. Vincent, our Besotho guide, arrives at the top of a steep hill, with a path covered with smooth, round rocks, and starts heading down without a hitch. POWER does not head down as easily. “Pull hard to the right! Hiy! Hiy!” I do what Vincent says. After walking through the bulls we’re back at the top of the hill. This time POWER starts the descent.

It’s very steep and POWER loses his footing on the loose rocks but finds it again quickly; this happens many times. I’m jarred. I’m jarred again. My heart’s racing and my knuckles are white on the reins. I’m starting to think we’ve made a big mistake. Is it too late to turn back?

We don’t turn back. My momentarily terror lessens to the point where even the steep parts seem quite normal. It’s beautiful out here. The roof of Africa, they call it; the lush green mountains with red dirt strips are gorgeous. It’s very sparse out here, very rural.

I think a lot about my gradfather’s journey through these parts seventy four years before. I can’t imagine him doing this alone, with even fewer resources and even less development. He must have been an strong man.

I don’t remember much of him; he died while I was still young and half a world away. He helped me make a tiny table and chair out of wood once with the kid’s tool set that I’d just gotten. He must have been patient as well as strong.

POWER’s stumbles-and-refooting become common place. I wonder if Grandpa’s horse stumbled, too.

Well, that was fun. I’m not quite sure why I decided to do it but I think it turned out alright. I didn’t have any of the stories planned before the day I wrote them and I enjoyed having the pressure to write something.

It sort of makes me want to do a 365 days of stories project. I’m not sure I have that many stories.

I’m going to tell you a story every day for the week.

I lived in a crazy communal house in college. On any given day, you might find people programming a laser-light show in one of the rooms (via the internet), disassembling a ’70s motorcycle, debating whether one can be truly selfless, building custom made Nixie clocks—”Don’t touch the back. It has enough voltage to kill someone”—or making plaster molds and subsequently casting wax copies of their genitalia.

The house was in the Back Bay, in one of those coveted brownstones and had been the home to MIT kids since the ’50s, which grandfathered in some lovely things like an open center stairwell. This feature lead to drops. A drop must be loudly announced with the name of what you were dropping; one would yell “laundry drop!” and drop his bag of laundry down four floors. It was a lot more than carrying it down.

While laundry was the most common drop, pennies, large rubber balls, bouncers (our name for Rubbermade polycarbonate mugs that did indeed bounce when dropped), printers and any number of other things were dropped.

The center stairwell was also a brilliant communication method. “Andy! Someone’s at the door for you!” for instance. One day I left my room on the fourth floor with the purpose of throwing away cottage cheese that for some reason came with chunks of pineapple in it and tasted simply wretched. Jesse was at the bottom of the stairs yelling: “Ian! Phone for you! Iaaaan!! Phooooone for youuuu!” Ian lived on the fifth floor which, was built after the rest of the house and was cut off from the main stairwell. Ian was not going to hear Jesse.

I saw my chance. “Jesse, I’ll get Ian if you try to catch my cottage cheese drop.” I’d save him walking up four flights of stairs, so it seemed fair. There was a slight pause. “Okay.” “You realize if you don’t catch it right, it’ll explode all over you.” “Yeah.” I wondered if the person on the phone was hearing all of this.

With gusto previously unparalleled in a drop announcement, I yelled, “Cottage cheese drop!” and let it go. The container accelerated down four stories at a rate that could be approximated as 9.8m/s^2 if you ignored the effects of drag. In retrospect, Jesse never had a chance. Jerry Rice couldn’t have made this catch. There was an explosion and cottage cheese was everywhere.

I ran up to the fifth floor. I’m not sure Ian could even understand what I was saying through my laughter or, if he did, I’m sure he had no idea what was so funny about there being a phone call for him.

–

[Epilogue: Yes, I helped clean up the cottage cheese.]

I’m going to tell you a story every day for the week.

Near the end of my time living in Taiwan, I decided to go to Kinmen (formerly transliterated as Quemoy), a Republic of China (Taiwan) island 2km off of mainland China for a weekend. It’s a fascinating place that’s had a lot go on in the last century: isolationist Fujianese culture followed by briefly adopting British-Asian colonial styles and then sustaining shelling by both the Japanese and Maoist Chinese.

It leads to some shocking scenes: traditional Fujianese villages with miles of bomb shelter tunnels underneath. Or sorghum fields, waiting to be harvested for traditional brews, with rusty anti-parachute spikes every 10m. Such images are endless.

The English proficiency was very low and I had mastered only a few dozen words and phrases of Chinese including such useful phrases as “This is a pair of chopsticks” and “This is my business card” so communication, or lack thereof, was a major issue. I didn’t hear any English on my flight. I was picked up at the airport by someone that couldn’t speak English; I was taken to a scooter shop where I rented a scooter from people who didn’t speak English. Only when I got to the guest house did I hear any English and then it was quite broken.

I was in over my head. I was an island.

At one point I tried going to the local-style noodle shop. Well, I succeeded at getting there. And I succeeded at standing awkwardly in the entrance for a while. I even succeeded at pointing at a bowl of noodles with pork and indicating I wanted that dish.

When the proprietor said something as she carried a bowl past me, I thought she meant it was mine so I followed her to the table where a young man and an older woman were already sitting–it’s not entirely unusual to sit with people you don’t know–and started to sit down. Then the young man’s friend returned to the table and sat in that chair and started eating the dish I thought was meant for me.

Seeing my confusion, the young man got up and grabbed me a chair. “Xie xie” (Thank you). A dish of various meats and tofu arrived. “We,” he said motioning in a circle, “together.” “Oh. Xie xie” and I tried a few pieces. My noodles arrived and I started eating them. (They were delicious, incidentally). He pushed some sauce toward me. “Spicy.”

Finished with their meals, the young man and his friend got up and paid the proprietor, who gave me a funny look. He came back over to the table. “You no pay.” The spicy sauce must have started to get to me because my eyes welled up a bit. “Xie xie.”

No man is an island, it turns out.

I’m going to tell you a story every day for the week.

How I came to talking to the agitated man on the other end of the phone at 2am starts three years earlier in a fourth floor rock club in Pittsburgh that–no joke–had a chain-link fence around the bar.

That bar was Club Laga where Andy’s dad had dropped us to go see Bonnie Prince Billy. I hadn’t heard of the band or the frontman Will Oldham, besides Andy’s warbly voiced impersonation of his song “I am a Cinematographer”, which he mostly used to poke fun at my own uncertain singing. But I watched the band, backlit with moody blue light, and enjoyed the show.

“That one song was really good”. Andy knew what I meant. “It’s ‘I See a Darkness’ and Johnny Cash recorded a cover of it.”

Three years later and I, like many other indie rockers–oh fine, I’ll say it, hipsters–had ‘discovered’ Johnny Cash, so when American IV came out, I was playing it on my new radio show.

I played “Personal Jesus”; the phone rang. The caller seemed agitated, almost irate. “Why are you playing Johnny Cash?!”

I wanted to defend my selection but suddenly I wasn’t sure. “Um, I dunno, because I like it,” I mumbled. “Because he’s good I guess?”

“Damn right he’s good! He’s fucking great!”

I’m going to tell you a story every day for the week.

During the summer of 2002, I had an internship in Stuttgart with Behr GmbH. It was part of the MIT-Germany program. My time there had many classic fish-out-of-water times; this is not one of those.

I stayed in a hotel for the summer, in an Apartment Zimmer. Basically it was a normal, non-suite hotel room except when you opened one of the cupboards there was a tiny kitchen inside. Kitchens in third world rondavels are more equipped than this. Needless to say it didn’t have laundry facilities and the hotel’s were far too expensive for a student budget.

One Friday I rushed off to a laundromat (ein Wäscherei) to get some laundry in while I had the use of the Opel Astra from work for the weekend. I didn’t have much time, though, another person from the program was arriving by train at 7:30 for a weekend adventure, and you know those German trains are on time.

I walked in. “I möchte meine Kleidung waschen.” Ja ja said the old German couple who ran the place. I sat and waited for my clothes to be washed. As the wash cycle continued I got more and more agitated; it was getting closer and closer to 7:30pm and I didn’t want to be late. I announced that I didn’t need them to be dried after all, I’d take them wet. I paid and as soon as they finished in the washer, I gathered the still wet clothes and practically ran out to my car.

From behind me I heard “Hallo! Hallo!” (Hello! Excuse me!) It was the old man who ran the place. He was run-waddling down the street waving a pair of my wet briefs wildly in the air. Red-faced I thanked him and rushed off.

I just wrote a poem:

I was all excited because I saw I’d gotten an email
but it was from me
the one I just sent
sad

Menlo Park is dead at 10pm on a Sunday.

[personal thoughts, ramblings after the jump]

(more…)

I think the Coudal Partners’ Field Tested Books Series is pretty interesting so I thought I’d try one of my own.

Roald Dahl’s Omnibus field tested by yours truly at Schloss Emlau, outside of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria, Germany. Early August 1995.

I was in Germany with my second cousins and their parents (my dad’s cousin, her husband and children), the Fuesers. I’d just finished 8th grade and was going to be starting high school in about a month. The Fuesers lived in Solingen near Koeln and Duesseldorf and the like. It was my first trip far away from my immediate family (I’d gone to London and Amsterdam with my brother the previous year) and my German was spotty from three years of slow and substandard German education. Part of the reason to go, I think, was to improve my German. I was nervous and shy about my German skills. I’d think for ten minutes about how to ask someone to pass the chocolates only to have them offer before I asked. Eventually I gave up trying and that turned into a refusal as the trip went along. The Fuesers all spoke English fairly well—they spoke English better than I spoke German certaintly—but it was obvious my refusal to speak German was a strain on them.

After about two weeks in Solingen, we left for the south of Germany, for Schloss Emlau, more of a nice hotel than a castle (Schloss = castle, palace). It was perhaps sometime during the car trip, or perhaps only after I arrived at the Schloss Elmau that I started Omnibus. Most people know Roald Dahl for his children’s stories, but the Omnibus included many of his short stories, including those that he contributed to Playboy. I was no longer a kid and I was reading “adult” stories.

There was a dance in the grand ballroom at Schloss Elmau. I didn’t want to dance. (I wasn’t much of a rebelious teenager, but I say that this German trip landed smack dab in the middle of my three months of rebelion.) Instead, I would go up to the balcony overlooking the ballroom, dressed up in my flannel greys and shirt and tie (because, my aunt decided doggoneit, even if I wasn’t going to dance, I had to be dressed in case I changed my mind) and read the story about a family feeding their weak baby royal jelly only to see it start turning into a bee. Roald Dahl has a way with characters and stories. They’re not subtle or overly complex, but they’re good.

I’d also read at night. My bed was across the room from the son’s, Justus’, and I’d read with the light on while he was asleep. My innocent fourteen year mind absolutely exploded a story about two buddies trading wifes (without their knowledge) for a night. This story is quite possibly less graphic than what ones sees on prime time TV and definitely less graphic than what one sees in any R-rated movie, but my young mind was sent reeling and I had to contend with a funny feeling in my pajama pants.

I read it quite quickly. It was good and I was lonely. All my communications were strained so I withdrew.

On the last day at Schloss Elmau, I made a concession: I went to a class to learn the Schloss Elmau dance with the daughter, Olga, and we danced it at the dance that night in the ballroom. I’d learned all the steps well but it went into a freeform waltz portion at the end, during which I repeatedly stepped on Olga’s feet. We decided to sit down instead of dance that part.

I saw the Motorcycle Diaries tonight at Flicks. It’s a movie about the young Ernesto “Che” Guevera and his friend Alberto Granando taking a 12000km trip through South America, initially by motorcycle and later by foot, boat, hitch-hiking and whatever other means were necessary. It’s a very interesting movie. The two main characters are interesting and the story is subtle, but engrossing.

Thoughts, in three:

• there are a lot of movies based on real life, because real life is interesting. leading to…
• I should write more about my life, particularly a memoir of my time at MIT and the quasi-autobiographical road trip screenplay that I started
• I really should learn Spanish. If you’re in the Bay Area, you’d understand. I’m not naturally gifted at languages, but there’s no reason I shouldn’t work at Spanish (and later: Zulu and Afrikaans).

My life is a movie. A perfectly scripted movie. I have come to an obstacle and fallen, only to persevere and be rewarded in the end.

Pittsburgh-Las Vegas-San Francisco. Easy enough. I can do that. Easy. Nothing to it. The first flight was at 8:45am. I arrived at the airport at seven am. I waited outside in the cold, the twelve degree cold. You do not make up a temperature like twelve degrees; you make up a temperature like nine or sixteen. I saw the line inside. It was long, too long. The line outside was shorter, but still long. Maybe a third the inside. I’ll wait outside. It’ll take forty minutes. Maybe forty-five. An hour tops. You must check in half an hour ahead of time. Relieved! It was eight twelve when I handed my driver’s license to the skycap. SFO via Las Vegas, thanks. Woo. That was close. Twenty minutes and I’ll be through security. It’ll be tight, but I did it.

Expletives! Expletives under my breath! Expletives muttered aloud! They thought it was past eight fifteen! It’s not! Can you not see my watch! Do you see a five or a six or a seven in that time! No, you see a three at the end so it is clearly not quarter past! You are clearly mistaken. My computer has shut that flight down; I can’t do anything about it. First one locked out of the flight.

Seconds! Missed it by mere seconds. Perhaps many seconds, perhaps one hundred or two hundred, but not five hundred. Not one thousand.

Another line. My feet are warming up at least. My feet are freezing. Blocks of ice! Another forty-five minutes in line. I was on the Las Vegas flight, eventually to SFO. Oh, you won’t be able to get there till tomorrow. Tomorrow? I work tomorrow I’m being picked up today! I am being picked up at half past two today! Don’t you see?

I’ll see what I can do.

Minutes past. Where is she? I think she’s eating breakfast. Surely she cannot be working on my flights still. She cannot be still seeing what she can do. I look around for commiserating glances from people in line, people at neighboring check-in counters. I only get blank stares ahead. Everyone is tired, exhausted.

My supervisor wants to put you on the ten fifteen Charlotte and the evening flight to SFO. You’ll get there at eight fifty-one. Tonight. I can do tonight. Maybe Dave can still pick me up, maybe not, but I’ll get there tonight.

Standby.

Still on standby. Bischoff, there’s one seat on the flight if you want it, unless you want to give up your ticket for a voucher and another ticket. No no, I’ll go now. I’ll go now. Thanks.

I’m that guy. I’m the last guy on the plane. I’m the guy that everyone stares at. Where were you? they burn at me with their eyes. Sorry. I’m sorry. I wanted to be here earlier. They wouldn’t let me on. I was standing out there ready but they were not ready for me. I have a guilty look on my face, but I can’t help it; it’s not actually my fault.

But do you see? But do you see where I am now? (This is where the rewarding for perseverance comes in.) I have been rewarded. I am four hundred miles from San Francisco and seven miles off the ground and I have leg room. I can put my ankle of one leg on the knee of the other right in front of me. Do you want to see me do it? Did you see that?! It was great. I’m done doing it now though because I am typing and that is not comfortable for typing. I did it just to show you I could. I just ate my third snack—cashews, chocolate-covered wafers, pretzels—and I’m on my fourth drink—heiniken, coke, water, coke. Do you know what the people had for dinner in coach? Nothing. I had stuffed chicken with and excellent salad and an impressive, but not untoppable, pecan pie.

You cannot make up a story like this—you can actually and people did and then people stopped because they thought it was too far fetched, too cliché. This is it though. It happens. Persevere. Persevere and be rewarded.