Friday, March 25, 2005

Azerty, Paname, et la Famille

Currently, I'm in the computer lab in my friend Quin's dortoire (dorm) à Paris...
And I'm a strugglin' with these AZERTY keyboards, you don't think it makes a difference, but it does, and if you don't know about AZERTY then look down right now, and read what you see...
QWERTY

I have some interesting anecdotes/observations that will have to wait till another time. Among others, I have put The Hong Kong Chat versus the Xaintrailles Chien, and The Love Story of Pepin et Koba on the backburner. Sometime...

Last night, dinner with Quin at hyper-trendy Toi, and then botched delayed and short rendez-vous with Ethan. All nights can't be legendary...

Meanwhile, I sit here in Paname, which is slang for Paris that I had never heard before yesterday, and wait the arrival of my family, arriving practically within the hour!!!!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend, and enjoying Spring.

Joel

Wednesday, March 16, 2005


Greg et Moi Posted by Hello

Moi Posted by Hello

Dave et moi outside Rijksmuseum, we did, in fact, enter Posted by Hello

Brewery Tour Posted by Hello

Sherlock Profile in the heart of the Heinken Experience Posted by Hello

Experimenting with camera, undoctored self-portrait Posted by Hello

Tangled up in a Blue Morning Posted by Hello

Venice of the North Posted by Hello

Three Amigos, moi, Dave, and Greg Posted by Hello

Snowy Amsterdam, in sepia Posted by Hello

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Amsterdampened

Have you ever tried walking through a white cherry Icee? I did for a third of a fortnight.
This post aims to be as fragmented and difficult to navigate as the purported Venice of North, the gritty city whose grid's inspired by spiderwebs.

A-dam is bizarro Berkeley, if the latter's intellectual backbone were replaced by a mercantile one. It was a twisted sort of homecoming, meeting Dave (Minc) and Greg (Sherman) there, eating Mexican food at La Margarita and Rose's Mexican Cantina... Comfort food for us Angelenos. Watching Curb Your Enthusiasm for the first time, albeit huddled around an 8" portable dvd-player, could hardly seem foreign in any country.

Sights seen: Rijksmuseum, Pancake Bakery, Heineken Experience, Van Gogh museum, testament to a man who didn't decide to become an artist till 27, course he only lived a decade after that...

As a temporary expat (which doesn't exist), I've had Ernest Hemingway on the mind. Relatedly, the explosive passing of Hunter S. Thompson (a man who meant nothing to me when he was alive and holed up in his Colorado compound) has exerted some post-mortem literary pull on me .

He too idolized the way Hem lived and wrote, but unlike me, also the way he died (self-inflicted shotgun wound). Must creation always be so sacrificial?
Elana and I have had many conversations on the overlap between art and depression, but does the first really require the second?

It's all so predictable, and anyone/thing extreme (HST par exemple) is just dependant on and reacting against that paradigm. What needs to be prescribed is a proactivism, soberer and in better spirits than Hemingway or HST could provide...

In any case...

Amsterdamage

Soporific, torpid, corporate canal land of lotus-eaters,
Where the coffeeshop counters culture
And sensi seeds are no beanstalk’s beans
Cause Jack ain’t going nowhere.
Anne Frank's intact inside but has a different veneer
And Rembrandt’s brush whitens the mind’s teeth
I know little about Vermeer.
Of all the lowlands a crime rate of 0%,
Because nothing, neither evil intent nor accident,
Can smear your reputation when all exposure
Has been declared decent.

Friday, March 11, 2005


Barrack for Jews, not for long stays... Posted by Hello

Emprisonment Posted by Hello

Me Posted by Hello

Special Prisoners' Quarters Posted by Hello

Eerily well-preserved Posted by Hello

Self-portrait wit thousands of stolen shoes, Auschwitz Posted by Hello

Auschwitz Posted by Hello

Dead men's suitcases that they would never need Posted by Hello

Auschwitz: Work Will Set You Free Posted by Hello

Mathieu turning on the heat Posted by Hello

Salty Jesus and disciples Posted by Hello

I know, let's build the world's largest underground chapel.... out of salt Posted by Hello

Reenactment of Polish Legend, medium: salt on salt Posted by Hello

Copernicus statue of salt , Wieliczka salt Mines (he visited once) Posted by Hello

The Germans et moi Posted by Hello