Episode V: Repugnance Strikes Back

In the interest of full disclosure, a lot of this entry is going to come across as self-pitying pathos, but know that it isn't intended that way, and should be taken as critical but honest reflection.

A while ago, I wrote a long and trenchant post about my post-high school life and how I anticipated that this summer was going to be occupied in equal measure by avoiding people I don't like and spending time with people I do like. Unfortunately, it has spiralled into me not really seeing anybody. Sure, I've hung out with my high school friends a few times before I went to Italy. After that, I haven't seen any of them. Part of the blame must come on my shoulders, as I spent a lot of time looking for a job and now that I've found one have little time to hang out during the week. However, I can't help but wonder why nobody calls me anymore. During high school, I got calls all the time, and while we didn't do a whole hell of a lot once we got together, I often enjoyed the meaningless hangouts and just shooting the shit. Despite occupying myself, the question of why this happened and the signs of friendships from one's past are getting harder to ignore. Yesterday on the subway, I was could hear a song about losing a friend from someone's ipod. Last night, I was watching an episode of the hit Canadian comedy "The Newsroom" where the main character George is met by a friend from high school who accuses George of thinking he's too good for everyone and cutting all ties to that group of people. These signs were starting to get absurd. I was turning the whole situation over in my mind this morning while driving to get my haircut, and the answer hit me like a bolt from the heavens and I almost hit a Nissan Maxima.

I'm a bastard.

Now here is where I want you to remember that pathos warning I issued earlier. I am not fishing in the compliment pool for reassurance that I am a nice guy and all that Lifetime crap. I'm a bastard, and I know it. What's worse, I don't do anything about it. In fact, I indulge my obnoxiously sarcastic personality to monstrous and ill-advised proportions. I am excessively rude to people, often to their faces, have virtually no sense of propriety and if I were anymore self-absorbed I'd collapse on myself like a neutron star. It's textbook. For a long time I got away with it and people still hung out with me, though I suspect they did it just to enjoy the show when I turned on someone like an LAPD Rottweiler. Nowadays, after time in college, people have matured (probably) and are wisely reticent to hang out with a narcissistic creep who offers no postivity to a group dynamic. I can't say I blame them, and probably secretly applaud their presence of mind. Who could take all that abuse without some payback mechanism?

If I knew me, there is no way we'd be friends.

Financial District & HBO Does It Again

Tomorrow is my first day at a new job. I cannot say that I know for sure what this company does, or what I am doing for it, but I do know that it is at an address I had no idea existed: 11 Broadway. Before I got this job, my knowledge of Manhattan was fairly good on the Upper East and West sides, strong in midtown between 3rd and 7th, and good in Union Square and the Village. Even in the Village, the lowest number I've seen Broadway go to is in the 600s. In midtown, the building addresses look more like phone numbers. 11 Broadway can only mean that nether region of Manhattan: The Financial District.

I don't mean to denigrate the Financial District. It is a center of American and global commerce. It houses Wall Street, Battery Park, and has views of the Statue of Liberty. That said, it is rather one-dimensional. If you don't want to walk past banks and investment houses, you could take in a museum: The Museum of American Financial History. You see what I mean? At night, save for the South Street Seaport, there is precious little going on. Of course, I won't be there at night, but a place that is so alive in the daytime should have something to do at night. For all its money and power culture, the Financial District is kind of like that rich friend you have. He seems to have it all from far away, but as you approach you realize that money is all he has going for him. Plus, he is overrun with tourists trying to take pictures in front of the New York Stock Exchange. This metaphor kind of got away from me.

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I started watching the HBO show "Entourage." It is a hilarious depiction of rising acting star Vincent Chase and his boys; Eric, his business saavy manager and best friend, Turtle, his corpulent gofer and best friend, and Johnny "Drama" Chase, Vincent's older brother and current falling star. All of them live off Vincent's dime, and while Eric has a certain hunger to make it and take Vincent to the heights of Los Angeles demi-god, the others are content to go along for the ride. Eric tries to steer Vincent to substantial roles in good movies and build a solid career, while Drama and Turtle try to steer Vincent to parties with truckloads of hot women willing and able to submit to Vincent's good looks, charm and celebrity. Rounding out the cast is the phenom that is Jeremy Piven as super agent Ari Gold. Brash, over the top, and constantly chasing money and women, Piven is pure brilliance as Gold. He is the Ego to Eric's Superego in Vincent's life, while Turtle and sometimes Drama act as the unabashed Id. The show is produced by Mark Wahlberg, and is sort of based on his life getting started in LA with all the hangers-on and getting used to celebrity life. It is like Sex and the City, if Sex and the City were in LA, were funny, and had realistic and engaging plots. Beyond that, the similarities are shocking. The second season has just gotten started, and I am hooked. You should be watching this, because come Emmy time, I think this show might pull a statue or two.

Italy, a piece

So I have returned, triumphant, from my 10 day trip to Italy. It was an amazing trip, and I urge anyone with the means and opportunity to make it. I cannot do justice to the trip in one enormous post, so I will add information about the cities over a staggered period. I might also add my trademark irrelevant posts as well, just so you don't choke on my descriptions of Italy. That all being said, I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention something about the trip.

We flew Air Canada to Rome, which involved a flight from to Toronto, and then a 9 hour jaunt to Leonardo di Vinci Airport in Rome. Now, I like to imagine some people read this page and perhaps might be so bold as to take my advice on something. If you hear nothing else, hear this: for the next two years (minimum) avoid Toronto International Airport like you would avoid a piano being dropped on your head. It is a dingy and labyrinthine study of needless complications. I am skipping around a bit, but pretend I'm Garcia-Marquez. On the way back from Rome, we had our connection in Toronto. Our bags could not be checked all the way through from Rome to our destination, and we had to pick them up in Toronto to pass customs. The procedure for getting our bags was as follows: arrive at terminal 1, take a bus to terminal 2, go to the baggage claim belt, get our bags off the belt, walk through a short corridor, deposit our bags on another belt, take a bus from terminal 2 back to terminal 1, retrieve our bags from a belt, pass through Canadian customs, pass through American customs, mercifully board the flight. Murphy's Law being the unshakable truth that it is, our bags were...lost between that second belt and the third one. As we stood staring incredulously at a conveyer belt full of luggage that nobody seemed to claim, we were running out of time for our flight. We finally filled out some forms demanding that our bags be shipped to us at home. It was a grueling and idiotic enterprise. Toronto Airport's logistics make about as much sense to me as Kangaroo Jack being the number 1 move in America its first week.

Anyway, let me indulge you with some Italy tales. Our first city was Naples, which we arrived in by train from Rome. Italian trains and train stations are nice enough, but are sort of a microcosm of Italian life in some ways. The trains are always a minimum of 35 minutes late--even when they arrive early. Railway station employees seem to not understand that people have trains to catch, and need service quickly. They are all to busy smoking 3 cigarettes at once, watching Juventus play Parma on a TV behind the counter, and gesturing so wildly that they poke small children in the eyes. Nonetheless, our arrival in Naples was in the early afternoon, and it was so hot even my parents, who grew up in tropical climates, complained. Naples is a fascinating city that is an intense study in Italian life. Everyone says that Italy intensifies as you head south, as the more European cities of Milan and Rome in the North are tempered by an international flavor. Not Naples. It is distinctly Italian. There is very little English spoken, and the Italian image cultivated through movies greets you on every corner and cafe. I loved it instantly. Naples has a chaotic and rumbling charm all its own, personified in their taxi drivers. We rode in a lot of taxis in Naples, and they all seemed to have a few things in common. First, every taxi driver in Naples is your best friend, or at least he acts like it. You are infinitely amused when they place their hand on your shoulder and passionately explain to you that since it is after 10 PM, what would cost you 10 Euros in the daytime has now been adjusted to a fair of 35o,000 Euros. If you looked at their faces and didn't speak Italian, like me, you would believe every word of it. These guys should be getting Oscars. The other shared trait among drivers in Napoli is their extreme recklessness coupled with cheerful obliviousness. Naples drivers lunge down alleys and scream around corners in whichever lane suits them, but are blissfully unaware of the danger they put themselves and passengers in. It is almost instinct, like they can feel that enormous van coming around the corner and slam the brakes and swerve around it, only to stand on the accelerator a moment later. It was like a Formula One race with traffic. I used to thing New York cabbies were dangerous, but the Napoli drivers make them look like Freeman in Driving Miss Daisy.
For dinner in Napoli we had pizza, fitting since Napoli is the birthplace of pizza. Italian pizza is generally thinner, has less cheese, but is more filling. It was light and exceedingly tasty without making you feel like you swallowed a cannon ball, a common after effect I get when eating at pizza hut. After dinner, we walked around Napoli's Via Toledo, a major shopping street full of clothing stores, gelato vendors, and cafes. I found it very interesting that one of Napoli's most lively streets shares a name with one of preeminent centers of dullness. You know what people do for fun in Toledo, Ohio? They leave. But enough bashing Toledo, no need to kick it while it’s down. Back in Naples, we grabbed some gelato and headed to a large indoor mall, the name of which escapes me now. Inside, we met some Italians and sensing we were foreign by our baseball caps and cameras, they asked us where we were from. When we mentioned New York, they all got very excited and told us how much they loved New York, how it was so fun and alive. Then one of the Italians, a blond haired, blue eyed gentleman who looked like he knew his way around a nightclub, informed us that he had lived in America as a model for some time, setting up camp in Los Angeles and South Beach. I couldn't say I was shocked--he looked like the type of chap who would live in LA and Miami, but I was amazed at how much enthusiasm he had. It was nice to see. Later, we walked down to the boardwalk equivalent, a sidewalk area off a main road that overlooked the Naples harbor. It was gorgeous, full of soft twinkling lights and the gentle slap of waves against rocks--it was no wonder the Italian youth made this their make out spot, as we saw 15 young Italian couples trying to suffocate each other with their mouths, I thought to myself, "hey, that's Italy."

More on Capri, Florence, Venice, and Rome later.