The Mustache in Me

It's been years but for whatever reason (laziness) I decided to grow a (shitty) beard, as I am want to do. I went on a two week sales trip to Florida and I kept wondering if it made any difference to how people perceived me. After failing to resist the urge (temptation?) to not leave myself with a mustache when I decided to shave this week, any questions around changed perceptions and facial hair have been dropped.

Today I noticed a pretty attractive girl walking next to me who I had recently actually set across from at a neighborhood cafe for about 2 hours (while still having a mustache) and she decided to casually cross over to the other side of the street. She continued walking in the same direction, parallel to me, for at least 4-5 blocks, while avoiding all eye-contact. It was amazing.

(note: photo on left - creepiness added for effect)

Case in point - example #2, a small child holding his mother's hand walking in front of me turned back, saw me (or probably really just the mustache), issued a small whimper, and did not turn around for the rest of his stroll.

The Upsell

Hello dear readers (if there are any of you left out there),

I stopped posting awhile back because I found out my mom was reading this blog. Not that it's a private blog or I reveal any deep dark secrets, I just didn't like her talking about my gas problems or knowing about some things when I had previously just assumed that she was very far (my father Herb as well) from the blogosphere realm. Well not sure what I will do going forward but recently had a blogworthy event I thought I'd write about (+ I am on a 4.5 hour bus ride back from NYC this weekend too).

I used to have two frogs that a friend bought me (I named them Ace and Gary because they were both male and seemed to cling to each other about as much as their gay Saturday Night cartoon counterparts). After Ace or Gary died, not really sure which one was which, I thought it was kind of sad that the other didn't have a friend. So I called my local pet store and inquired about getting an African dwarf frog (see above picture) and the pet store dude inquired about my current tank - which truth-be-told is a tiny little square of a tank with just enough room for a little bamboo plant, snale, some rocks, and the frog (it's a self sustaining tank). After telling me these little tanks were just gimmicks and I needed to give more space he said he could help me out. Upon arrival at the pet store with Ace (or Gary) I asked to see the African dwarf frogs and the same guy from the phone told me he wouldn't sell me another frog in my little tank and I kept explaining that I didn't want to buy a bigger tank and the pet store guy continually telling me to look at the sad little face and meek legs of my current frog I told him to just show me the damn frog. He finally showed me his albino frog (see other pic.) which is about 4 times the size of mine. I asked if they would be ok together and he replied, "no this one would eat that one." So in the end he never even had a frog he could sell me and was just trying to get me to buy a new tank. It turns out one bigger and cheaper option was only about $10 (and he threw in the gravel at 50% off) but I was so annoyed by the experience I told him that I didn't care if my frog was comfortable and stormed off with Ace (or Gary) never to enter this store again. He told me he thought the frog would be dead in a few weeks but that is something a deceitful and spiteful pet shop owner would say to a customer, who wasn't in the end, actually a customer so we'll see who wins this round later. For now, I think Gary (or Ace) is happy to know that I tried and seems pretty fine with the home he's had for a year and counting.

Confessions of a gaseous man

So I have this problem - I pass a lot of wind. One problem specifically is at work, I pass gas when no one's around, but then my boss comes by as it lingers and it's really embarrassing. It's incredible too that this mostly only happens when she comes around (and it's a she so that makes things worse) and it's almost as if she times the once or twice a day when she comes over to my desk for when it stinks, and I mean it really stinks. She doesn't say anything but I know that she knows and that probably she know's that I know which is even worse since normally she just leaves as soon as possible after arrival with no comment and cutting her agenda short. I think I have a few options to remedy this situation and would like your opinion on this debacle:

1. Take beeno

2. Change my style so as to avoid the "time bomb" and make it somehow more instantaneous

3. Excuse myself and publicly acknowledge it

4. Walk the 30-40 ft. from my desk to the bathroom

I don't know if man has yet to find a solution to this but it truly is awful

Nudity: Not always a good thing

Yesterday a very large girl with a very large butt mooned me in Newport. It was not a pretty sight. She even asked beforehand, along with my two friends, whether it would be ok, to which we replied quite simply, "no," and she went ahead and did it anyways. I mean did she think we would enjoy this? It made me think that there's this perception that nudity is always a good thing and everything naked is more fun, and well I do believe there's some truth to that, this was a stretch (yes I know there's a double entendre there).

Speaking of girls (and not mooning) Danilo, my roommate in Jamaica Plain, said a great quote tonight. We were talking about how we really needed to start composting and he commented: "yeah, girls here love composting." After laughing about it for a bit we sort of thought it could be true. "They would be so impressed and we would be drawing them all in" he commented. While we were at it we could start using rain barrels and vermaculture - all very interesting ideas I suppose. It also made me realize how Jamaica Plain has changed me and how I would never have thought like this in the past.

I do wish I could write about girls more (since that's where most of the good stories are anyways right) but in the wishes of not defaming anyways I refrain in this blog. Suffice it to say that if I did I would probably embarrass myself more than anyone else.

If this song said "Andy" instead of "Dandi" it would be my theme song:

http://s0.ilike.com/play#Nortec+Collective:Dandy+Del+Sur:453729:s27492597.9571032.7360331.0.2.17%2Cstd_41e09a8dcfdf49e582f7434e308991bf

(does it bother anyone else that this stupid "Ilike" thing only lets you place the song once. We can obviously search around on the internet and find it somewhere -pandora, youtube, grooveshark, last fm, vimeo, the options are limitless these days. They can't stop us! oh wait, shoot, I don't want to tempt fate - I take it back)

Polo & Guatemala

So I’ve been wondering what to write about my trip to Guatemala for about a month and polo came to mind. I’ve got a very open mind and am usually up for anything but one thing that blew my mind was attending a polo match in Guatemala – I’ve been on a Cameroonian radio show, attended a Monster Truck Jam, visited a sex museum, and swam in a bio-luminiscient bay, to name a few more eccentric things I’ve done as far as attractions and events. What made this recent experience more shocking was the fact that I had just been living in areas that hardly had roads let alone horses. “Boston?” one of the indigenous farmers had remarked when I told him where I lived. “Massachusetts?” I tried next, and still no reaction. I finally explained I was from the Northeast, U.S. At the polo match, quite a different venue with a very different crowd, it therefore should not have been a surprise when after answering the same question and telling the person “Boston – It’s in the Northeast U.S., Massachusetts” they replied, “yeah no shit.” (in English too).

The match was in Guatemala City with my friend’s former boarding school friend who came to the States for a decade or so before returning home to help run his family’s business. This man is one of the elite of the country; he was actually the president of the polo club. So he made sure we were well taken care of. Before seeing this though I have to admit I had never even thought people really played the sport, certainly not in the U.S.

Apparently you need at least six horses (which cost about $250 each to feed a month) –one for each period of the match, membership to a club (also usually pricey), a lot of $ to maintain the beautifully grassy playing field, and the money to pay for international refs. to fly in ($2000 a game maybe) and if you really want to win, you can bring in up to two players a team of higher ranking, who for a nice fee, will join your team for the match. As you can tell, it’s not the easiest sport in the world to join. What’s crazy is how interesting it is to watch and how powerful the horses are. It’s actually a really violent experience and people getting trampled are not uncommon. But it’s less about the game then the prestige of being there, hanging out with other wealthy and influential people, and honoring your family’s tradition of running the local polo club.

Our team ended up losing but it didn’t matter, we ate the best food there that we ate the whole trip (it was catered by a five star Guatemala City steakhouse) and met some powerful and racist Guatemalan’s who skin was sometimes lighter than that of my own (and my Jewish friend who traveled around with me). We were also constantly given more alcohol resulting in some contentious debates about Guatemalan history with some of the polo crowd lackeys. I highly recommend Guatemala as a place to travel internationally with beautiful sights, an interesting and colorful history, and an amazing disparity between the wealthy elite who play polo every now and then, and the poor who have no electricity or running water.

Quarter Life Crisis - It's not time to panic...yet

Today I turn 25. This seems like a monumental achievement in some ways. On the other hand, I about the same age as NBA legend Lebron James and Mozart had been composing incredible symphonies for his last 20 years at this point in his life. But I'm not Mozart and I'm not Lebron James, or am I? No I suppose I'm not, so I don't need to panic. But birthday's are strange things. I really don't want people to know because as soon as they find out they start telling other people and those are probably people you don't care about and then you just have a bunch of people wishing you something and making you feel like most of the people you know are not really people you will know in 5 or 10 years and you have very few close friends. I feel ok writing it here on this blog since no one really reads it, except perhaps a few close friends. It is fitting that my friend Sean, who's blog I also read avidly, wrote to me to a few days ago:

"You know what scares me even more, rationalizing this irrational existence." (in reference to finding a job, what to do with his life, and playing the game of sending your resume in, trying to look impressive, etc.) - see http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://www.eyeweekly.com/article/55882&h=19117 for a great piece on quarterlife crisies

Ok sorry for the depressing note there, 25 years, big thing, big news, go me

-here's to the next 25!

Mental Block in Guatemala

Greetings from Guatemala, well actually Honduras for the moment. I´ve crossed the boarder to check out some ruins here in the infamous Copan, ok maybe not imfamous but something along those lines.

After visiting some coffee farmers last week with Equal Exchange I´ve gotten away for a week to explore Guatemala some. I´m pretty excited to be here. The weather is beautiful and all is well.

I got a fish the other day at a restaurant and they brought the whole thing out so when I got to the end I asked the waiter if normal people ate that there and he said, ¨if you want to.¨ Which definitely wasn´t clear enough for me so when I forced the issue he told me that some Guatemalans did eat it, including the eye, but most gringos did not. Since I wanted to be stronger than most Gringos I decided to take a stab at it...I mean literally, but when I did it´s mouth opened and I just couldn´t do it. I just kept staring at it and I couldnt get over how discusting it was to eat a fish´s brain so I gave up and submitted to my mental block.
sad, maybe next time I´ll have more courage, although I still don´t know about the eye.

One other thing is that I got electrocuted in the shower the other day since they don´t have much warm water here and it was an electrical head which heats it and I mistakenly hit and caused a terrible electrical chock that passed through my arm to my entire body. I guess it´s part of the adventure but I´m just saying, appreciate what you got with your warm water no electrocution showers up in the Global North