Category: Life

Yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday. I have never been a big fan of American football. In fact I didn’t even know who was playing until a few hours before. I googled “Where to watch the Super Bowl in BsAs” and found my spot. Around 10pm I left my house anticipating a night full of English language and rabid football fans frothing at the mouth wearing that football jersey everyone told them not to bring to South America. On the way I stopped by my favourite empanada place to fill up on some cheap eats and booze before I was forced to pay American prices. The place was packed with people standing on toilets and sitting on the beer fridges which is not normal for this place. But it was normal when the TV is showing the Boca Jrs v. River Plate futbol (soccer) game. I decided to stay and mingle with the locals and drink two litres of Quilmes and watch the first half of the game which ended at 1-0 Boca. I then found my way to the Super Bowl bar and watched part of the game. The futbol game was between two of the biggest teams in the country being played at a neutral field so I thought it was a good chance to compare to the Super Bowl.

Many of my friends back home will go into great detail about why football is an amazing game. Most of their descriptions are comprised of some sort of comparison with being on a battlefield and you have the general who is barking out orders and how hard it can be to move only a yard and all this hullabaloo. All very accurate. Football players train to do a single activity and do it very well. That activity might be running, catching, blocking, hitting, throwing, kicking, whatever. Then plays are constructed around these particular activities which are then practiced over and over again. Then in a game time situation these plays will be executed with precision and hopefully result in some gained yardage or stop the opposition moving forward. The quarterback will have a sheet of paper taped to his arm with a list of these plays since there are so many he could never remember them all. He then has a microphone/speaker in his ear which is connected to a multitude of people on the sidelines who are analysing pictures taken from a blimp, the moisture in the air, the colours of the other team’s socks, and a bunch more of other factors which dictate what play the team will try next. The team is usually comprised of 50 or more players with maybe half as many coaches and a small army of support staff to clean helmets, pass water bottles around, and so on.

Indeed. Futbol takes on a slightly different approach. Each team consists of players who, for the most part, are able to play any position on the field and this is a necessity. Futbol rarely ever stops and the play will shift from back to front to left to right and without notice you might find yourself being a defender or with an opportunity to score a goal. A team usually has two to three coaches with some athletic trainers to do the water bottle passing. The coach can bark commands and is often compelled to look good on the sidelines but he and everyone else knows that once the game starts, the fate of the game is up to the players.

Football is a game of fleeting opportunities that give any given player the chance to be a star or a failure. Futbol is a game that allows you to construct these opportunities. Not to say there are no fleeting moments but they are rare. Football is a game of incremental satisfaction while futbol is a game of ultimate satisfaction. This can better be explained with some examples. At the American bar last night, everyone would sit down and be quiet. Every now and then a sudden jump and roar of celebration as their team caught a pass and gained 14 yards. This celebration would be intertwined with a lot more moments of dissatisfaction as the team failed in some way. At the Argentine futbol game people would not blink for minutes at a time. You could see the people slowly rising out of their seats as if to prepare for what was about to happen but then it never would happen so they would lower back down and maybe lubricate their eyes or mouth. Then if a goal does go in, the house goes crazy and only then do they feel satisfied. There are times when players mess up and people will scoff but it isn’t the end of the game and they can recover. Football keeps you with small bursts of somewhat good things. Soccer keeps you the entire time with the construction of the goal, or the ultimate satisfaction.

A 0-0 game in soccer is not a bad game. It is possible to be exhausted after a 0-0 game. You could have been kept in this tantric, almost-about-to-erupt state as both teams are hovering on the edge of victory but equally amazing plays are preventing them from doing that.

The Argentines were generally not so drunk. The Americans were all drunk and slurring. The Argentines tended to pay attention to the game. The Americans were all over the place. The Argentines applauded frequently. Americans yelled. The Argentine game had no commercials. The Super Bowl is famous for its commercials and people even say they look forward to watching them. The crowd at the Argentine game was intense — it gave me the shivers just watching it as the two teams walked out.

These two sports are very representative of the two political systems being represented by the two countries. Football gives the middle class small incentives to make themselves think that they are getting a lot when they really are not. Thus the weird scoring system. Futbol is more indicative of the very poor fighting for what they want and only every now and then they get what they want regardless of how many people might be supporting them.

In conclusion the soccer game was much better. I ended up leaving the American bar before the game was over due to an overflow of oversized American males.

I love foosball… it can appear to be extremely haphazard and frantic to many people watching. But there are moments in a foosball game where the game has been building up slowly, no goals for ages, a few near misses, some amazing blocks and desperate acts of defence, but no goals. The players know that this cannot go on forever and the tension will be building. People can be talking to the players and they will probably respond but their mind is at the level of the little red and blue men on the field. You can be in the middle of a conversation with the girl of your dreams, Gandhi, a white shark, Buddha, your most feared enemy — it doesn’t matter — you are liable to wildly scream in their face and risk punching them as you flip out after scoring that goal you have been waiting for so long. Here is a time that happened to me…

It was freshman year at university and Pat (I think) and I were playing foosball at the Phi Psi house. While we were playing we are listening to Tele and a sorority girl talk about her sorority’s male beauty pageant. Tele, being the stud that he is, is supposed to participate but alas he is sick and is unable to participate. They are trying to figure out who should fill in his spot. While one of these intense foosball moments I previously mentioned is going on, I suggest that I will do it. She tells me I need a talent. I consider the situation while blocking an endless onslaught from Pat on the mini soccer field. I half-jokingly say that I will get tasered (stun-gunned, whatever). The idea is well received by everybody around but I don’t care as I think I am about to score with a fantastic shot from the right back, but Pat’s goalie is up for the challenge. She says we need two people. Nuthead says he will dress up as a cow and beer bong some milk half jokingly. This idea is as valid as the previous one and suddenly everything is solved. I scream “GOAL, BOOYAH MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!” to Pat and the long string of tension has broken after wrapping itself around us for at least 20 minutes. I look up and then ask the pageant planners, “OK, so what happened?”

So the day of the pageant rolls around and Nuthead and I need to prepare as we have done nothing until this point. The format of the pageant is in four parts: swimsuit, knowledge quiz about the sorority, formal dress, and talent portion. Nuthead had a cow outfit for some reason and there was always a beer bong around the house. Milk would be purchased right before the event. His swimsuit was something ridiculous like board shorts, a wife beater, and an inflatable ducky around his waist. His formal dress was some killer 70s/80s looking suit. My swimsuit was my roommate Geoff’s speedos which had a waist of size 24 while I am easily a 32 with huge legs due to me playing soccer 7 hours a day with a stunning tan right above the knees. My formal attire was purchased at the Salvation Army that day and ended up being pretty slick considering it was thrown together last minute. We went to Grants for Guns to purchase a taser. They were happy to give us one since we claimed it was a gift for Nuthead’s sister. We got two 9-volt batteries and we were ready.

Right before we go to the auditorium we decide to try the taser real quick to make sure it wouldn’t kill me or something on stage. We put the batteries in, turned it on and this thing was mean! We barely touched each other with it and didn’t want to feel how it would be if you jammed it into your side. The sound is the worst part about it as it sounds like somebody is slapping a lardy thigh with a ruler 5 times a second with fury.

We show up backstage and find our lovely “coaches” from the sorority. They tell us the answers we need to know for the knowledge quiz and then give us a bag of goodies. The best goodie in the bag by far was the Gatorade bottle with the label removed and replaced with a homemade label with pleasing pictures and encouraging words and the contents of the bottle were replaced with pure Captain Morgan’s spiced rum. Nuthead and I decide that since the pageant was soon we should drink all of the rum so that it would take effect by the time we got to the more difficult talent portion of the contest. A great idea of course.

The social science lecture hall was absolutely packed with people overflowing out the back and people sitting on the floor. Thankfully we had a large contingent of Phi Psis claiming a good chunk of the seats in the middle left. I come to find out later that the arts department was having a very rare kegger party and our very non-artistic friends had found their way there and practiced the art of drinking so they were floating on the same level as Nuthead and I were after our special Gatorade. I gotta say I was feeling a little nervous at this point. The pageant starts and it’s all bells and whistles and lights and flash. The guys are announced and they walk out on the stage in their swimwear and take a little turn on the catwalk. Everyone else other than Nuthead and I had board shorts on from what I can remember and with heavy concentrations of muscles on the upper body. My legs looked ludicrously large in this tiny speedo (the first time I had worn one) and who knows how the package looked but I felt that I got a good reaction from the crowd.

We are then told to sit down, without changing clothes I might add, and prepare for the knowledge portion of the pageant. The questions were things like “When was our sorority founded?” and “Who was the chapter advisor?” Nuthead and I were drunk at this point. We didn’t do well but the scoring was obviously not important as they were just arbitrarily claiming how much each question was worth.

We then all go backstage to change into our formal attire. Not much to say for this round other than we both looked good and we both were more drunk than we were during the quiz round.

Now for the talent portion. I think there was some buzz in the crowd as word had trickled out as to what was going to happen even though we were trying to keep it somewhat of a secret. Nuthead goes first. He walks out in a cow outfit, udders and all, with a beer bong in his hand. He then pours a half gallon of milk into the beer bong and then proceeds to drink it to completion. Amazing! Takes a bow and walks off the stage. The crowd loved it and applauded him as he gracefully found the nearest trash can and then yakked it all out, backstage. The other guys were doing things like playing the guitar, or building letters for the girls, or singing — you know, real talents. Then my turn comes. I come on the stage in my formal 70s gear lip-syncing to “I Touch Myself” and the plan was to do this for only 30 seconds or so. Of course Nuthead let me sweat and this lasted for a minute or more as I performed some weak dance moves. Finally I waved him out, he comes in his cow outfit and tasers me in the side until I fall on the ground writhing in pain. The crowd is gasping and laughing and applauding I think. Then in an effort to not lose the crowd, Nuthead comes over and stuns me again with a prolonged 3-second stun with me twitching on the ground the whole time. Then follows up with one final blast just to make sure I am done which I relay to him through some contorted facial expression that I was definitely done. The crowd now is not really sure what to say or do as they seemed to feel my pain and were not sure if I was alright. I got up, bowed, and stumbled off stage. Good thing I was drunk.

In the end we did not win. It was all rigged and the guy who was not that exciting who built letters for the girls won. It was not important to us. However, our section of the crowd was getting a little rowdy and the outcome was the final straw. Kamran gets his hands on the taser and starts stunning anyone he can reach in his area of the crowd, strangers or not. Bodies are hurdling the chairs two at a time and girls are screaming. Kamran finally gets the taser wrestled away but only after getting a few of our friends for good measure, especially Phil. This cleared the whole auditorium and needless to say the sorority was not pleased with our actions. I think they banned us from any more events like this or at least they didn’t tell us about them.

I had some gnarly scars on my side for about 6 months after that night but it was well worth it and a very good memory from university. I would take a tasering any day over mace, which will need to be discussed in another post.

If anyone has any pictures or movies from this event PLEASE get in touch with me. Mine were lost in the great picture deletion of junior year.

I seem to be having quite a few dreams recently where I am being chased either by some sort of evil force or as if I am a fugitive. Last night I had one where it seemed we were in a mountainous area which reminded me of my buddy Len’s old house at Lake Nacimiento. Pretty much the yeah-buds group was having a great party and then it all turned sour and I needed to run. I successfully got away through a hidden gap I knew about in the fence and when I got through the other side I was captured, indicating that someone had ratted me out.

Another chase dream I had recently was a rather cool one. I was on the moon with maybe 100 other people who were all there to see this most amazing eclipse. The sun was huge in our vision and you could see so much detail of it as the earth began to eclipse this most intricate-looking sun, which was bursting with solar flares and black spots. Heat was never a problem for us. At one point during the end of the eclipse, the sun appeared to pass right through the moon right next to all the people and everyone backed up to allow it to pass, which it did — but it went straight through everything as if it never existed, and it was the most intense thing I had ever seen. The earth passed and light was restored in a mysterious way to the new moonscape, which was very reminiscent of a Brazilian favela. I then joined a large group of Asians (likely Japanese) as we jumped and leaped our way around the favela as some unknown force was chasing us. The jumping and leaping was like those French guys you see on TV who have some competition to see who can get to some crazy point in the fewest steps. There was something about barging into a fancy dress party and then we leaped into a situation where we were surrounded by our followers and then I woke up.

Prior to this dream I had another really interesting one. It was John Finch and I, and we show up at a really posh mansion with flamingos and mini golf courses all around. As we enter, John says “prepare to make the best first impression you ever had” and we walk in. I notice a really intricate marble counter with a small city built into it. There are some people dotted around that I didn’t really recognise. And then all of a sudden I wake up (in the dream) in some lawn chair near a circus or carnival. I start walking around and I realise that I am wearing some fancy sparkly tuxedo, or something close to it, with awkward buttons in the front. This girl Tamara (I don’t know any Tamaras) comes to say hi to me but she seems agitated. We talk and then she says she has to get ready for the show and goes off into a dressing room. At this point I realise I feel a little off and keep having bouts of light-headedness. I stumble my way to the pool where there are all sorts of older people who seem to be pleased with my presence, even though I am in this ridiculous tuxedo. I crack some jokes and then I am asked why I went to bed right away. I said that I thought it was weird that I then woke up in this costume, meaning someone had to have undressed me in my sleep. Next thing I know, I am naked, riding my bike down the river bed in Costa Mesa, but I quickly realise that I am naked with all sorts of important electronic belongings like my camera, phone and something else I cannot remember. I then look back to see that I had dropped everything and it was all broken, and decide that I must have passed out or something from another bout of light-headedness — which was starting to make me think more and more that I had been drugged. I gather my belongings and then go back to the house. I get dressed, grab a sleeping bag, and think I need to find Tamara. I get off a train in front of the circus and walk through this shady little churchyard, and as I enter, a shadow comes up to me and grabs my sleeping bag and then I instantly just feel helpless and things go dark with just a shadow pulling at my sleeping bag. I refuse to let go and try to speak but nothing comes out and then I feel scratching at my chest but still refuse to let go. At this point I get worried and wake up (in the real world) and the dream was over, not to be returned to.

In most of the cars here and in Brazil, and possibly most of South America, there is always a fire extinguisher. Many times a rather large one. All I can figure out is that there is a large propane tank in the back of the taxis, which I suppose could be considered flammable, and likely at some point in the past, a child and un perro pequeño were trapped in a burning wreckage outside of some politician’s house screaming for a fire extinguisher. That politician then became rich with some legislation and a friend in the fire extinguisher industry.

My friend Ken introduced me to some guys called Ryan and Rob who are at the end of their South American tour, and John Finch and I joined up with them for a night. For me these sort of travellers are dangerous since they have no regard for money, and it becomes easy for me to also disregard my money as we go out and purchase large alcoholic drinks at large, thumping nightclubs with large outrageous covers. (50 pesos is large to a wandering non-working individual.) We all go to a place called Asia de Cuba, which is a fancy club on the river in Puerto Madero. Thank you John for negotiating my entry even though I had shorts on. By the way, being the only one wearing shorts at a club where you’re not supposed to be wearing shorts and immediately going up into the VIP table section is a method to turn some heads and initiate some real game. We stay for roughly an hour and then decide to go to another dance club, but find out that place is closed at 3am for some reason on this day. So our new friends, thanks to Ken, say “we got a club”. They take us to downtown tourist town in Recoleta. We leave the taxi and you are bombarded with guys trying to get you into their strip club with enticing drink offers. We were not interested, as we intended on buying bottles. First one we go to, filled with very good-looking girls that instantly surround me while other guys find out that bottles cost $600 US. I am dragged away and we go to another one. This place has no girls in it. Next place is good enough and we stay. New friend Rob is straight to the back corner, intending on some late-night action with whatever money he has. Luke is at the bar explaining to three girls that their hair smells nice, although using the wrong word for “smell”, which is apparently funny. At the same time, these girls all want me to buy them a drink, but it costs 120 pesos. Fuck that. So I tell this girl that I will happily house her for a week, buy her breakfast, lunch and dinner, and take her to the zoo, but I will not pay for her drinks. Apparently I was pissing her off since this is her livelihood. I am happy to report that we eventually left around sunup and I did not spend any money at these clubs. No idea what happened to new friends Rob and Ryan.

John and I are returning in a cab to my place first. The cab driver stops at some point and says that he cannot go any further since he pressed the button on the meter. We don’t care and tell him to keep going to my place as I did not want to walk the 12 blocks home. Cab driver refuses. John and the cab driver start arguing and we basically try to point out to this guy that he is a cab driver, his job is to drive us — why won’t he drive us? We get out and start to walk away and refuse to pay this guy the 12 pesos if he is not going to do his job. And then John says…

“¡Qué pelotudo!”

This guy gets out of his taxi and starts running at us with his fire extinguisher in hand and a look of pure evil in his eyes. John and I decide to run. Taxi guy gets back into his car and burns out in reverse to catch up to us. There are no other cars out and this guy could do whatever he wanted. In a moment of desperation, we decide to split up and I run the opposite way. But it didn’t work. Either way we end up at the same place we first got out, panting and breathing, with the taxista right there, obviously a little perturbed that we didn’t want to pay him. So John starts talking to him again, and we are discussing how we could “really” run away, but realise our options are futile unless we split up — and then one of us could risk serious fire extinguisher injury. So we paid him…

Although we lost the battle, I did manage to steal his car’s antenna while John was talking to him. I pray to all the gods that I do not jump in a cab with this guy any time in the near future and I always check to make sure they have an antenna. Good for me there are at least 10,000 taxis in this city. Hopefully he doesn’t read this post.

In my apartment in Argentina there are two cats. I am a fond lover of cats and I considered this to be a selling point on this place. One is a white cat that is not allowed inside due to the general attitude that the black cat is upset by its presence. The black cat, called Loska, must be about 22 years old by the way it moves and its general smell of urine. The only good thing this cat has going for it is that it somehow knows to pee in the drains, which unfortunately are in the house and not too far from my bedroom door. I should just let the white cat in and see what happens… what’s the worst that could happen? An elderly black cat gets mutilated by some thug white cat while it is peeing on a grate?

In one day I will give a training class to a group of people that will want to hate me, but hopefully I can win them over and teach them to embrace change even if it is forced down their throat without too much notice. In one month I will be enjoying the sparkles of a new language while at the same time trying to create an online service that I plan on forcing down the throats of people without much notice. In 4 months time I will be diving in heavenly bodies of water in Central America, looking for the next would-be client to utilise my online service. In 8 months time I will have added one more continent to the list of continents I have visited with a trip to Antarctica, stopping briefly to see if I can force my online services on the sheep farmers from my motherland in the Falklands. In 15 months time I will be in Barcelona grabbing an MBA and surrounding myself with individuals who will understand my obsession of finding people willing to allow me to force my services down their throat without really any notice at all. In 24 months I will be in South Africa sneaking/schmoozing/buying/pleasuring/begging my way into the World Cup games, hoping to find the next set of people that would really like for me to come up with something that could really help them out without much effort or money. In 36 months time I will be in India, gazing into the eyes of a tiger while on the back of an elephant, trying to find the people that would love for me to come up with project 9 to solve their dilemma(s). In 48 months time I will be in a Transylvania castle wondering how this rose got so red, talking on my cell phone to 5 others that are doing the exact same thing I am doing. In 72 months I will be vacationing in Southern California at my modest East Side Costa Mesa home, trying to convince my friends that I need people from all sorts of industries to help me jam things down people’s throats while never really giving them any notice. In 97 months I will be riding down the Champs-Élysées, shocked and dismayed by the fact that I just completed the Tour de France. In 120 months I will probably be bored with what I have been doing and begin pondering my next escape from the almost normal world that I had constructed around me.

It gets a little fuzzy after that right now, but I am glad it is so clear for the first part.

My friend Dustin introduced me to slacklining. I think he got it in Israel when he was playing pro basketball over there. (Figures, 6’9″ white Jewish guy, right?) This is a great sport and if you YouTube it you can find many great videos. The rope is made of nylon and is basically constructed like a huge tie-down — the same kind you use for your dirt bikes in the back of the truck. The rope is maybe 2–3 inches wide and slices down the middle of your foot. The rope is wrapped around two sturdy objects a reasonable distance apart and is tightened until you can launch a small child from it 30 feet in the air.

The only way I can do this is to focus into the distance at some unseen point and zone out. I have to concentrate harder than I do most other times in my life. Each step feels like a hike over an ever-growing mountain. The middle of the rope is the toughest, but if you keep your body balanced the rope mysteriously will not sway as you might think. I need to apply this concentration to other areas of my life. I always describe it to people watching me with: “…just as you feel you are going to fall, you can hang at that balance point, and you will stay up despite everything you thought you knew about gravity.” If you don’t think you will fall, then you won’t.

One drawback to this sport is the setup of the damn rope — it just doesn’t go fast, and it is slightly scary ratcheting something to 10,000 pounds of pressure and then having it slip in front of your face.

I have this cat named Mussolini. This cat was birthed from a whore and apparently turned out to be a whore herself. I determined she was pregnant right around the time I noticed the giant nipples on the belly and the nest she had made deep in the innards of my California king bed. In human years, Mussolini was pregnant at the ripe old age of 12 or 13 by my calculations. An unwanted pregnancy, to say the least. But what can you do? Well it turns out for an extra $15 (biowaste), you can get a two-for-one special to have your cat neutered and aborted at the same time. Thanks to the help of the Swedish roommate Johan, this procedure was performed on Mussolini.

Now the way I see it, I didn’t need to deal with kittens. They are a hassle and a mess and no one can deny that. So a forced cat abortion and neutering, although a new concept for me, seemed like a reasonable choice. It turns out that not everyone would agree with my sentiments.

Now let’s introduce any girl that found out about this cat cleansing. Every girl considered this to be murder and were vehemently against cat abortions. I became less of a human in their eyes for doing such a cruel act.

So here is the new way to find out if a person is really for or against abortions. Adopt a cat and get it pregnant by letting it go outside — cats will travel for days to get nailed when the heat is on. You’ve got to have the cat for at least a year to make sure people have an emotional attachment to it. Then force an abortion and all of a sudden the truth comes out.

I mean, Bob Barker made a living advertising the annihilation of cats and dogs. If we spayed and neutered all of them, who’s having babies? Just the feral cats, propagating their inferior seed while the clean well-bred cats are being stripped of their reproductive abilities. Coincidentally, the movie Juno was in theaters at the same time, which seemed only a little ironic.