Bloggy Blogg BLOG!? BLOG! ( A rough week in London)

Hello Hello Blog plus readers!

One week from right now I'll be sitting at a kitchen table eating dinner with my parents, with my ballin' cell phone in my pocket, probably blowing up with text messages, and a whole mess of the past three months dumped out chaotically on my bed.

Couple of notes about things that suck about me before I come home:

1.I suck at guitar now. Literally. I suck. My playing has gone to complete shit... I mean I have to admit it. I can't even play some stuff I wrote before I left. I'm going to have to practice like everyday when I get home to get normal again, I'm going to try and hide this fact at band practice for a little while by not improvising or doing anything but smiling, while I go home and feverishly practice all through out winter break and smash my head against my wall. Don't be mad at me though, I had nothing to practice on the past three months but my travel guitar that doesn't have enough frets and too wide of a neck and is constantly out of tune and I had no one to jam with. No Justin, no band, no British kids to play an open mic with....sad.
Sorry music, but I promise I'll start working hard again as soon as I land.

2. I look the wrong way when I cross the street and will probably crash my car. I am the undisputed King of crashing my car, there is no way living in the UK has helped dethrone me.

3. I think I put on like ten pounds. I'm not Gut-man Johnson like I used to be, but I feel like Carlsberg and pasties and fish and chips and English breakfast have systematically ruined my small intestines. That is what I feel like when I wake up in the morning, those food items. I need a vegetable. My body is all fucked up right now. I hope the track by the high school is open, I think I might actually have to run around in circles again to prevent onset type 2 Diabetes....

4. Yeah yeah yeah it finally happened, the kid who drank a cup of coffee everyday since sixteen and raved about how great it was my whole life drinks tea now. I'm a traitor, but I got into it. Green tea or Earl Grey please... Cup of the Ol' Chai....kiss my ass Red Bank. Oh yeah and I like my toast with Jam or Marmalade WHAT!

Ok. So more true to my "blog" what have I been up to since I left Liverpool?
NOT MUCH.

I spent the week inside writing terrible papers. I know they are terrible papers because I am an English major, and completely and UTTERLY capable of knowing what constitutes a good paper, and these are downright bad.

The UK system works like this
Instead of the very informed professor getting you motivated to explore a subject, and then you write a paper with your own unique thesis that is interesting because you really thought about it, know tons about it, and it's original, and dare I say, fun, (to us closet nerds at least), The professor stands in front of the room and drones off powerpoints and babbles incoherently and then you write a paper on some subject you have never been introduced to ever that requires a semesters worth of outside research because you didn't learn ANY of it in the classroom.
Fun right?
For example, For London History, we walked around London every Monday and the teacher told us, nice little tidbits about London. It was very pleasant.

My essay: A 9 Page extravaganza on how because of the actual geographical city of London, The Pre-Raphaelite movement was formed and influenced art in the 19th century and France. We never learned about this once, I saw the term "Pre Raphaelite" in passing on a visit to the Tate Modern. I did hours and hours of my own research, formed a thesis, and wrote a bad paper because I've never studied art history and wasn't sure if I was stepping on toes or making the right connections. Regardless, I actually liked what I was learning, which was cool ( I am a closet nerd and do actually like this sort of thing), but I'm sure if someone who knows something about Art read this paper they'd say...I was just trying to get a C. Embarrassing.

Great.

So I stayed in and wrote bad papers. We didn't even have taco Tuesday, but we did get to see Sweet Charity the Musical which I sort of enjoyed because the music was so contemporary and it didn't have a god damn happy ending.

Wednesday we saw this play about psychoanalysts who are old and have relationship problems which, I get it, I'm supposed to like because I'm a college student and this stuff is important to history saba da. All the bald men with collared shirts and half dead wives in the audience seemed to really enjoy it.

Like I get it. I get these plays. I'm not stupid, I just don't find plays about things I could read a 101 textbook about and be equally as excited very entertaining or moving. It's not a good thing or a bad thing. I know plays aren't SUPPOSED to entertain you. I get it.

But sue me for on this one night wanting to be entertained, I even said to Daria," I just want to relax tonight and watch a play". I know that's the taboo crime against "artists".The desire to watch some guy get eaten by a lion on stage instead of bored to death by three old ladies babbling about how their childhoods are fucked up. I'm a fuckin Roman I guess, I belong in a vomatorium. .

I mean I'm half kidding, The Iceman Cometh is my favourite play in the whole world and I'm moved to tears after I read the four hour script that it comes with, and that is conceivably one of the most boring things one can read. I love Beckett too, I even actually liked Found in the Ground. I just don't see the fascination in these BORING plays that people go see because they put up with their boredom so they can learn something they already knew. Just go see something good. I mean this play wasn't even symbolic of anything or anything it was dribble.

At least the Fahrenheit Twins was aesthetically pleasing in it's infinite boredom, and I personally found it interesting because of it's hidden biblical connotations. Reverse Eden, no happy ending. Anti- Disney, yeah that was good. I can dig that. That had something BESIDES what I was watching, if that shouldn't be enough. I like that.

BUT I MEAN CMON!
Remember The Line?! That play SUCKED! It's supposed to be about one of the most important French artists, Edgar Degas. And I know Professor Dykes mentioned this, but I SWEAR if he called on me I was going to say the same thing. This play was as sterile as a fucking doctor's office, what was French about it?What made that place look like an art studio? I thought the whole time, "there is no way this British guy drew that, there is no way there is sexual frustration here", The guy had like a cockney accent. The play wasn't Sexual at all, HOW CAN A PLAY ABOUT ART BETWEEN AN ARTIST DRIVEN TO ISOLATION BY HIS OWN GENIUS AND A HOT YOUNG GIRL WHO FUCKS HIS LIFE UP NOT BE SEXUAL..... IN FRANCE......IN AN ART STUDIO? She takes her clothes off and I think the lighting guy did a better job of showing he was excited.

Anyway that was a rant. I've seen a string of bad plays is what I'm trying to say.

Thursday I slept in and wrote more papers.

Friday, we were going to Spain.

I got two hours of sleep. Went to sleep at 6:30, woke up at 8:30. I spent 16 pounds on a train to Luton airport. We got to the airport, went through a passport checkpoint, security, and waited for two hours.

Upon getting to the plane, the old bag behind the counter tells us we needed to get our passports checked at baggage check in. We were supposed to get a stamp on our tickets saying our passport had been checked. Well lady, ok, I'm reading the ticket, and it doesn't exactly say that. We went through TWO passport checks, so WHY do I need the one at baggage check in? This was just ridiculous, it wasn't just us, there were a whole group of people quarantined and told they "can't board" because they didn't go through baggage check even though we only had a bookbag.
So we couldn't get on the plane and missed it for no reason. We lost about sixty five pounds on the round trip planes, and we'll see if we get refunded for our hotel. I spent 11 pounds on a trip back to New Cross. I didn't really care, I figured that the plane would go down or something and maybe God or Allah or The Force or Batman or whatever spared my life for whatever reason and I thought not to argue with fate. Someone tells me not to get on, I didn't wanna argue. I actually didn't care at all I was kind of happy to have my last weekend in London back. I'm glad I was just traveling with Emily and Daria, some of my previous travel-mates are not so positively charged. hehe. :)

We went back to New Cross and ate dinner at Noodle and rice, which was weird. Than, we got drunk with Kyle and his friend from Montclair, NJ. Everyone got like black out drunk, I wasn't too bad. Daria and I went to the Amersham Arms, maybe my favorite pub in London, and had a beer and a real good talk.

I walked into my flat drunk at this point at about 3:30am and found that there were fries cooking in the oven. I banged on Kyles door and found him sleeping in his bed. I woke him up and told him he had fries in the oven. Maybe that is why I didn't get to go to Spain, so I could prevent Kyle from burning down my flat. Me and Kyle drank a bit more, and then we had a very funny incident involving a chair which I will not detail right now. We had a good laugh though, and talked about how it sucks that we'll never get to hang again after this trip.

I slept all day today, went to the "Winter Wonderland" in Hyde Park, which was cool. English people turn Christmas into like a German drinking competition, which is interesting. There are just like pubs and sausage stands set up everywhere. I bought a wooden tie.

Ok, Tomorrow I'm going to "The Church". My alarm is set for 8:00am.

That should be an interesting blog.

Cheers
Andrew