BaRou is the New Bklyn

Baby boom

2008-08-20T07:00:00-05:00

On Friday, Power BFF'er KarTek took the day off to act as my wingwoman in the search for the smashing vintage gown I will get married in (as opposed to a vintage wedding dress, since I most likely won't be wearing a white offically-designated wedding dress). While we have a date and exactly zero other concrete plans in place for next year's wedding (ugh stress), I jumped at the thrilling girly task of looking for the prettiest dress I will ever wear.

And, the search was a dismal failure. There were a few highlights, though: saying, "I can't believe I'm trying on wedding gowns!" was one, at the beginning. We must've gone into 20 shops, but I tried on just two dresses: the first was a yellow Chanel strapless gown. Not my color, for one thing. Then, as Karin tried to button me in and I did my best impression of Scarlett O'Hara hanging onto the bedpost while getting laced into her corset, and sucked in the gut which I'm pretty sure Scarlett O did not have, I heard a button fall off and go bouncing away. Oops, sorry, vintage Chanel gown.

Another highlight was discovering a rack of wardrobe items from "Sex & the City" at Ina in SoHo.

The tags didn't specify who wore what, but we instantly pegged this as a Samantha number. I'm not sure why they were letting a regular sweaty slob like me paw this piece of our collective cultural heritage. Like, Kim Cattrall's most private lady areas were covered by this scrap of Spandex fabric. Not so long ago, this sling contained Mannequin's coochie! At this point in our societal degeneration, doesn't that make it more valuable than an original Civil War uniform?

At least Ina recognized the gravity of their "S&TC" finds; this bathing suit cost the same as the Chanel gown had back at the other shop. That day, I also got to put my mitts on couture I'd never knowingly seen in real life before, like Versace gowns (pronounce it like Showgirl, of course). Most of them were like, BFD, other than having a fancy name on the tags.

Further delayed milestones after the jump.

Also on this recent extendo trip up North, it seemed that more than ever, everyone was getting married, had lined up someone to marry, or was having/raising babies. At least that's true in the suburbs--the city friends are still mostly the same. (More on the awesome Indian wedding we attended, coming soon.) What struck me is that all of the babies of our friends and relatives keep getting bigger. Somehow, as a pet-mom, I half-expect them to remain the same size like Cooper. I realize they aren't mini vampires, but it still always surprises me.

I have not yet decided for sure whether I will check off "love kids, but not for me" on my MySpace profile, but the thought of pumping one out right now still gives me the fear. Pregnancy grosses me out more the older I get, which may be nature's way of saying "don't do it!" Although if I were knocked up I'd probably kick off the shoes, put on a muumuu and consider it a nine-month excuse to read on the couch. But then we'd have the kind of pet that keeps getting bigger and becoming more of a wiseass which would eventually hang out in rapey neighborhoods with druggy friends and date dirtbags, etc. And it would also be the kind of pet we can't just leave behind and have the neighbs and friends pop in on to feed and play with when we go away.

So, in conclusion to this ramble, almost everyone is all growed up, even my late-blooming gang from high school.

I totally went to a WASP concert

2008-08-18T13:53:04-05:00

...up in the Berkshires last weekend.

Not that W.A.S.P. (unfortunately). The kind indigenous to the Northeast, who swarm (har har) to see the Boston Symphony Orchestra perform at Tanglewood in Lenox, MA, on summer weekends. With all the crowds gathered outdoors, eating and drinking in anticipation of the main event, it was kind of like tailgating for an LSU game.

Except it was the complete opposite.

I exaggerate, but a few of the ways the crowd at Tanglewood contrasted with Tiger tailgaters were the presence of raw vegetables, a prevalence of innumerable cheeses, probably zero percent of which had names ending in -Whiz or -eeta, and the general lack of beer in favor of wine. (We opted for beer, the impracticality which was soon evident. If you don't have a ride-on cooler, wine is just more portable.) But you don't want to have that glass spill over, so best get a set of these wine-glass stands from Williams-Sonoma.

These gents rolled with a portable picnic table and tablecloth.

And this guy three-upped everybody with his candelabra setup. For dining alone.

Overall though, as a scientific conclusion judging from this crowd, WASPs are not very exciting. They don't like to dance, so there will be no pictures of a Macarena in progress, such as there are when I've seen Tiger tailgating sessions. If anyone got intoxicated here, they must have turned it inward on themselves rather than put on an entertaining display.

Oh yeah, and there was also a live musical program of Mozart, and numerous shooting stars, for those who were looking.

Friday Roundup, Summer Filler edition

2008-08-15T07:51:57-05:00

A former cell phone contained my first digital camera, and my current phone remains my crummy backup camera in times of my main camera's absence (such as now). Celly cameras are also useful for "making a call" while you are really "covertly" taking a picture of someone. Normally these photos are forgotten, but now during my blogging's summer filler season, they constitute a blog post!

This woman, according to her T-shirt, IS your holla back girl.

This is our old neighborhood's character-in-residence, the pigeon lady. Right after I snapped this I saw her pick up a pigeon and caress it to her face. She loves those little disease-bags! I don't know why I never considered that she might. I just thought of her as crazy.

What manner of hipster holocaust occurred here? Wouldn't you like to know see? (Try not to think of that photo of John Lennon's glasses after he was shot.)

I am terrified of this life-size light-up Jeez and many a time have purposely taken my companions past it to see their reactions. One time at Christmas, someone put up a banner saying HAPPY BIRTHDAY. I never saw one saying WELCOME BACK at Easter, though.

Here's a tribute of a different kind.

Up in the Berkshires last weekend, I spotted this little guy out in the rain.

And finally, a fun link: Some genius combined LOL Cats and our hilarious president with sexy entertaining results.

Setting up, knocking down

2008-08-13T09:37:47-05:00

To my utmost dismay, I left my ever-present camera in another state this weekend so I won't have it for my last week of excitement up north, which also greatly impedes my visual aids for blog posts. Good thing I have some photos saved on my laptop from bowling! I know: thrilling, right!?

So I went bowling twice on this trip, which is twice more than I've done in years. First I went with bffs Karin, Lioux, Ellen and Patty (can you believe the last two don't have blogs to link?) in New Jersey, which is statistically one of the top five states in which to bowl. (I made that up, but it's true.)

We started out pretty badly since no one had bowled in awhile, and noticed that if you throw a gutter ball, the score screen gives you this helpful hint:

Ohhhh, so we should aim for the pins? Thanks for the tip, bowling robot!

There are always such amazing styles to be spotted at the alley. Two bffs took me aside separately to say, "You have to see this guy over there with the skullet ponytail!" Unfortunately I didn't get a good photo of him.

However, when the f and his stepbrother and I spontaneously went bowling up in Massachusettes (which you would think would be one of the bottom five states to bowl in, but which still provided a perfect bowling experience), we witnessed two walls full of photos of Skullet Ponytail's bretheren: The 300 Club. Alas, I again did not have my camera. Drivers-license-quality portraits blown up to 8 x 11 size, with wood paneling backgrounds, showcasing a panoply of pastiness paired with all manner of mullet and moustache.

One of many reasons bowling is probably my favorite "sport" is that you dont' have to be in shape or train or do anything unpleasant such as running in order to win. I have an odd style of bowling where I walk up to my spot, line everything up just right, take one step back, then throw. But because I am standing mostly in place for it, apparently to my fiance this means I bowl like a three-year-old. Maybe so, but I was still the three-year-old who destroyed everyone at bowling! Well, I won two and tied one out of five games total.

So we have a new goal, fiance and I: The 300 Club. Even though the best score I've ever gotten was only about half that. You have to have dreams.

Gently down the stream

2008-08-07T15:56:23-05:00

Picture it: Yesterday, a sunny August afternoon in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. To the uninitiated, the Pine Barrens is the desolate area of South Jersey where the Sopranos would go to dump bodies. To the initiated, the Pine Barrens is the notorious stomping grounds for the cloven hooves of the legendary Jersey Devil.

Leah and I were driving, lost, down another endless road identical to the last one, lined with pines, trying to find a place selling camping supplies (aka beer, fresh veggies, and charcoal), as "Sympathy for the Devil" played on the radio.

Leah said, "We're going to get killed tonight!"

Yep. With just the two of us, an empty campground, no dogs, and the lurking Jersey Devil, This was going to be the scariest camping since the windy mountaintop in Shenandoah Park last October. But as is often the case, we weren't even scared about the right thing.

The first thing I did almost immediately upon arrival at the campground was turn my foot on the uneven terrain and fall down onto all fours in front of the metalhead campers, bloodying my knee. Nice going, Kane. Less mature fellows would have laughed loud enough for us to hear, but these metalheads were all right and kept it quiet. I rinsed the gore off in the stream while trying to recapture my dignity.

But at least the place wasn't empty like it had been when Leah camped there recently: three or four other sites were occupied around the sandy grounds.

Leah wanted to go right into the water: a leisurely drift down the cedar creek on an inflated inner tube was the main activity here. I probably would've waited until today, and now I'm glad I did not. We drifted down stream for about 40 minutes, through the long sunbeams of evening, and it was so relaxing. As we passed our campsite early in the trip, we met one of our neighbors, a bald man with a large convex belly who was loitering around in the water like a hippo.

Later, when we got out of the water at the designated rope swing where she'd gotten out last time, Leah wasn't certain which way to go to get back to the campground. Suddenly we were potentially lost in the Pine Barrens in only our bathing suits and flip flops as dusk was falling. If you've ever been lost in the Pine Barrens at dusk with no means of defending yourself, you start to understand why stories like the Jersey Devil get made up. It looked the same in every direction and was most uninviting.

But we had gone the right way and soon were able to follow the sound of our neighbors back to the campground, who by the way appeared to be totally stoned and to not understand what on Earth was going on as we casually emerged from the woods behind them.

And now, after assembling the tent, it was time for the main order of camping business: sitting around the fire, drinking beer and laughing. Only as time went on I felt less and less like laughing and more like puking, until I was in fact puking. Again and again.

My friends and I like to throw around (frequently shout) the phrases "back to nature" and "to the extreme" while camping. This scenario called for both of those phrases. I issued forth stream after stream of my own, leaving plenty of recycled food and beverage all around our campsite. By around 11 or so I was so ill we had to pack up our act and get out of there.

After much discussion of what I might have eaten that nobody else had eaten (almost nothing) we concluded my mystery illness might have been cause by a bug I picked up from contaminated creek water through my cut knee.

Today I write this on my back, using the laptop as hot water bottle on my stummy. I've taken my first sick day in memory, lying around all feeble watching a marathon of "Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D List" all day, not to mention a little "Little House" and coming up next: two thrilling episodes of "90210."

It was a shame that that our camping had to be cut short, but I'm glad we got in that trip down the stream. And it just goes to show that you should make hay while the sun shines because tonight you might be vomiting your guts out.

Lowering the mast

2008-08-05T09:37:47-05:00

In mid-August, it will be a year since we moved to the Deep South, although admittedly I've been living in denial of that move the past ~~few weeks~~ year. There'll be some sort of roundup about that forthcoming, since you know me and how I like to round things up. But for now, I will say that the past year has happily brought a lot of travel and sadly brought a lot of death.

The latest casualty of something that was, for a time, a big part of my life: Playgirl magazine. Read my postmortem over at Radar online.

I am a bit sad to find that the suggestive title of this post did not come as instantly as they used to, nor is it one of my best. My fiance is delighted about this.

An unexpected fortnight in Brooklyn

2008-08-04T06:00:00-05:00

On the elephant dump in the room.

Only my friends will know what I'm referencing here. I consider myself too young to not blog, but too old to overshare. Let's just say regarding the Urgent Business I had to rush to NYC to address in mid-July: it was shitty, and people can be awful, but it brought me to NYC two weeks earlier than orginally planned, which turned out to be GREAT!

And now, some treasured NYC moments.

A birthday party! Supercute cupcakes and what was left behind.

To paraphrase the birthday girl's reaction to the above cupcake arrangement, "I can't imagine who at this party, 90% of which is gay men, would be thinking of anuses."

As I crossed Atlantic Avenue on the crosswalk, I had the right of way but the driver of a turning car decided he didn't want to yield and nearly hit me. Without missing a beat, I gestured angrily, one palm up towards him-- "Do you MIND?" which of course was met with cussing from the driver (because how dare I cross when I have the right of way?), which was returned with a big "F U" from me. (Only I didnt' say "F.")

Then I was like, I'm BACK! New York CIT-aYY!

In this era of emailing about your hurt feelings, there's something so satisfying about instantly yelling "F U" to someone who has wronged you. Too bad this only seems to happen in this impersonal category of wrongs, otherwise you would seem like a crazy person.

Two contrasting NYC moments: the "feeling pretty because you put on makeup and accessorized and wore heels just because you're in New York" feeling, vs the old "dirt blowing into your face" disgrace. (The former stuck with me more than the latter.)

Some rare, "I feel so happy just to be where I am right now" moments: at Maxwells' with bffs anticipating a comedy show that was definitely going to be good. Walking home through Boerum Hill brownstones by myself after a dinner at my favorite Thai restaurant (packed on a Monday night).

Harsh New York accents and casual cursing: YAY!

A couple of jokers in the coffee shop, sounding like the Sweathogs: "He thinks ah'm re-tah-ded." And an introductory line of small talk at my corner bodega: "This campaign is fucking interesting, you know?"

Remembering the weekend-morning in-bed text-messaging blitz: arranging brunch, pushing the meeting time back for brunch, and discussing the latest gossip/memories from last night.

Having a friend who just got dumped say one weekend morning, "Can you come over? I could really use a friend right now"--and actually being able to come over with a bag of carb-y bagels.

After my pal Brian who cooks at delicious, delectable Dressler (detail of interior decoration pictured above--can you spot the wee monster?) escorted me through potentially-rapey Williamsburg to the subway late one evening, and I waited for the G, a guy was sitting on the platform, plucking a banjo and singing in an annoying 1920s-style monotone: "People ignore magic when they see it every day." That lyric resonated as one of the most relevant observations I'd heard in a long time.

Brooklyn feels like home, it feels like where I belong, my best friends are there or close by, and I feel right and alive there. I know: boo hoo, etc.

Rock shows!

Liars @ the Cool Pool. But even better, nieces and nephews of the Liars guy being more excited than anyone in the crowd. Imagine if your uncle was a rock star!?

Martha Wainwright (with appearances by Rufus & Kate McGarrigle, speaking of musicians in the fam) @ the High Line

A cool low-key alt-country band we'd never heard of, Any Day Parade, at Hank's Saloon in my old neighborhood, just before I stole a poster with a picture of Johnny Cash flipping the bird, before we scarfed down too much popcorn with cheddar cheese sodium-bomb powder at a showing of The Dark Knight at Court Street Theater.

Earlimart @ Soundfix. I'm as bored as you are with this photo. I very much enjoy his/their music, though, when it comes up on my iPod on shuffle.

Sebastien Tellier @ Hiro Ballroom-- it tickled me that the man behind my video jam of the summer just happened to be playing while I was in town. The live performance did not live up to the video. Nothing could have.

And finally, some affirming graffiti to bear in mind always.

Encore: A Post-Vacation Listfest

2008-07-31T10:18:04-05:00

(I know; it's an encore nobody asked for. No matter, I have the wheel on this blog.)

Unfortunate Looks Which Are Apparently Acceptable in Europe

Granted, there are many, many fashion disasters right here at home. But the ones in Europe are a little different, and a little more multicolored.

The diagonal-across-the-chest fannypack
The rat-tail (pictured, the juvenile rat-tail)

Floral trousers?

Sun visors
Anything lamé
Are you ready for some FUTBOL? (see below)

"Drullet"?!?! Dreads + mullet = : 0
Neon colors are quite all right, as are men in pink pants/shorts

Oversized rave pants with streamers
Fauxhawks (why, like UGGs, does this trend persist?!)
The high-tops on the girl below remind me of my favorite sneakers from 1987-88: they were Balloons, the store brand of the mall shoe store Fayva, I do believe, and were all pastel colors: blue, pink, and yellow. I thought they were totally awesome...but it was 1987, and I was 13.

Oh, and below was an actual hair-don't, please forgive the cell phone photo of my illustration.

(Captions read, "Jheri curl, shaved 'headband' and braids with beads")

More Topics Discussed With Kyle on the Boat to Barcelona

Other bands play; Manowar kills
How he got wasted in Amsterdam and vomited prawn coconut soup out the window
How he lent Giuseppe some obscure band T-shirt to sleep in
Giuseppe in general
Getting wasted in general
Finding a chick to bang

Best Spontaneously Bestowed Nickame for a Passerby

Linecutter Rodriguez

European Vacation: Wrap it up, Kane!

2008-07-28T09:28:03-05:00

Posting the tales of my summer vacay has been taking longer than the vacation itself did, and is putting me into almost as much debt since I can't do paying work when I'm doing this, so I'm combining the last two stops in one (hopefully) brief post.

Interlude: Stopover in Paris

Somehow due to ~~the f being a student~~ ~~my being a freelancer~~ ~~both of us having lived in super expensivo NYC for years and hence now having no savings to speak of~~ general lack of good planning, by the time we had a six-hour layover in Paris, we were out of cash and our only functioning source of funds was a cash advance from my American Express card.

I know: that was really dumb.

Backing up a bit, we arrived in gay Paree by train with six hours to burn before our Chunnel train to London. First we had to find a tourist office and get cash, which proved to be extremely challenging. The main impression we got in our first frustrating hour or two there was that Paris hates you and does not want you to find their tourist office or bureau du change. Also, you are a stupide American for even trying.

After making our way to a second train station with our bags in tow, the change office didn't take American Express, our other cards were not working, and we could not find the tourist office to save our lives. But first things first: I needed to use les toilettes. Only problem was the incomprehensible map of the multi-level train station seemed to be trying to show all floors of the station at once in some sort of postmodern cross- section that we didn't understand as stupide Americans. I approached a uniformed employee: "Perdon. Ou est les toilettes?" Yay, I asked for something in baby French!

Be warned that when you ask something in French, even if your pronunciation makes it clear you have no idea what you're doing, you may be punished with an answer in French. I got a rapid, extensive answer of jibber jabber from this blonde young woman. I resisted letting my jaw go slack, nodded solemnly, and watched her gestures. I departed with a musical "Merci!" and walked in the direction she pointed, hoping she didn't watch me for too long.

I was getting mad at Paris. Why was it so hard to do everything here? Going up the escalators, determination kicked in: I WILL FIND LES TOILETTES! And I did. And it cost 50 cents to get in. I didn't know if I had it and was already trying to imagine where else I could leave my mark on Paris, but by some miracle I had the 50 cents. You'd think for 50 Euro cents a pop you'd get a plush WC, but: not so much! My stall had a watebasket overflowing with the most unseemly waste, almost as if women had fought back for having to pay by being filthy slobs. I felt bad for the attendant breathing in the fumes all day, since only the most desperate of folk would pay to get in there.

Alors. I set up camp next to an abandoned information booth while the fiance set off to attempt finding the tourist office so they could direct us to an American Express office. He returned, urgent: "Please tell me you have one- Euro fifty." There was only one American Express office in the city, and I had to take the Metro there. Pooling our change together, we just had one-fifty, just enough for one ticket. He showed me a little subway map with numerous metro lines curling around and intesecting each other it looked like a multicolored bowl of spaghetti, with my destination circled. Off I set on my mission: I better not fail or we had no way to get to the third train station where we'd catch the Chunnel train.

I got out at the Opera House stop and asked at a change office how to find the AmEx office: it was just behind the Opera House. Did you know that in Paris, "just behind the Opera House" means "to the left side of the Opera House"? I didn't know that until traversing six or seven streets just behind the Opera House. But I found the AmEx, and its long, rarely-moving line.

All told, my errand took two hours and I got on the wrong train back to the fiance, having to ask for help and growing ever more irritated. There would be no quick visit to the Art Nouveau museum today. We headed back into the labyrinthine Metro to go to the Chunnel station, and the f told me about the woman who had blatantly cut him on line at the tourist office when he was next up to the window. He'd said, "Excuse me," then "EXCUSE ME," to no avail and finally walked up, tapped her on the shoulder, and pointed back at the line, tersely explaining the concept of lines while claiming his place at the window. Enough with the line-cutters already.

At last we made it to the Chunnel waiting area, official British soil! What a relief it was to speak-a the language. We were in no hurry to return to Paris.

London

London was comfortingly familiar, and by the time we got there we were burnt out on sightseeing (as illustrated above).

Here, our conveniently located but rather mature hotel had the weirdest bed setup of all.

It also had this ye olden contraption in the closet for easier access to jumpers and trousers.

These digs were multiple steps down from the Barcelona accomodations, but the price was right. Me: I kinda don't want to touch this carpet with my feet." Fiance: "I kinda don't wanna touch this hotel with my anything."

The reason we'd stuck around Europe so long was finally upon us: My Bloody Valentine reunited to play at the historic Roundhouse Theater. The crowd was all 30- and 40-something guys with music boners. It was one of the nerdiest displays of geeky delight I've ever witnessed--and I've been to a Rush concert.

The concert was fantastic. Well, all except the last fifteen minutes or so when the band launched a massive audio assault you could actually feel like an earthquake. When it became clear this was going to continue on more than a minute, some people started to leave. You know, I don't need that, and I don't believe anyone like Pitchfork Media who claimed the end of the show was enjoyable. It was like some challenge to the cowd: take this punishment! I, too, bowed out early. Outside I caught the eye of another girlfriend who'd escaped, and we exchanged a look of total understanding. Guys, right?

The next night, our last night of the trip, we saw Radiohead at Victoria Park. Here's some folks on a roof watching the crowd head from the tube to the park.

Radiohead was incredible. This time the crowd was all 20- and 30- somethings, a more proportionate amount of girls, and it was more ecstatic than the crowd the night before, with lots of singing along.

As the light drained from the day, a plane passed above the stage and I dreaded going home. Radiohead were amazing as always. Kids danced unselfconscious and goofy like that scene from the Charlie Brown Christmas special.

After the show, a lot of fellows didnt' seem to understand how to use the portable loos.

And the streets were overtaken by satisfied music fans.

We waited out some of it in a fenced-off part of the park, with one last impromptu mini-picnic of bread and a bit of Marks & Spencer mature cheddar.

Then, after rejoining the unrelenting stream of people, as the crowd narrowed and we were routed around by gates toward the tube, one final resistance against those who attempted cut in front of us: the f and I joined arms to block them and I turned back to inform, "It's called a line." We should bring flyers explaining queues next time.

Right then! More than a month after returning back to American soil (though I still haven't returned to my Louisiana routine, and that's OK) that finally brings us to the end of the Euro trip.

European Vacation: Barcelona

2008-07-23T12:35:59-05:00

Barcelona is a beautiful, breezy city by the sea. Our first view of town from the ship revealed old classic structures alongside modern buildings and sculptures.

One example of the local mix of old alongside new is this seating at a fantastic modern park built when Barcelona hosted the Olympics, with the antique tower in the background.

The sight of sleek modern high-rises from the port was unexpected. I'd bet the Barcelona sklyine is vastly different than it was just two decades ago. And somehow, through the magic of the internets, we had booked a room at a four-star hotel for about half its normal rate, and it was one of those sleek buildings on that skyline, right near the end of the trip when we needed it most.

We hugged our pal Kyle goodbye as we got into a cab, with the travelers' knowlege that we might never see him again, even though we planned to meet him at the rock show that night.

In the nebulous category of budget hotels we'd been staying in up until now, there was a problem with every shower along the way, culminating in the one on the ship where you had to hold the shower fixture yourself over your own head because it was no longer attached to the wall, while trying to maneuver inside a stall smaller than a phone booth. Our Barcelona hotel room shower was the opposite of every other shower in Europe so far, in that it was awesome. We each took about six showers in just about three days there, water conservation be damned. The room decor was all silver and masculine dark-wood paneling and leather contrasted by crisp pure whites, the concierge was super helpful, we had free use of bikes with great shocks, and best of all a pool deck overlooking the Mediterranean on one side and on the other, the city stretching up the hill. The small pool deck was full of tanning beautiful people. The f and I definitely had the most body fat on that deck and we also won the prize for being the whitest people in Barcelona.

After dragging ourselves away from luxury, we went for a late dinner of tapas. Amazing. After savoring the tuna tapa, I'd been converted from sampling fish to enjoying it. We were getting used to this life of relaxing over high-quality meals each night (although we knew it was not to last: our last stop was London). Full, fat, and happy, we dragged ourselves to go find Kyle at the Cancer Bats show. We'd looked up the name of the club and it appeared to be some former school at the top of a hill--we hadn't dared ask our conceierge how to get to this dingy rock club, as we were trying to maintain the appearance of responsible grownups who could totally afford this hotel. We hopped on the subway and walked through a residential neighborhood to the top of the hill, under a full moon. It was too quiet and didn't seem like the right place. I used my toddler-level Espanol to ask the old couple manning the snack bar there whether the rock show was happening tonight. All I understood of their response, which might have been in Catalan and not even Spanish, was "not possible," so we had to head back to the hotel.

And we never saw Kyle again. Just kidding, we've seen him on the Internets, and I'm eagerly anticipating seeing his photos from the crust-punk/grindcore/whatever-it-was festival he attended. Although knowing Kyle's photography stylings, they're probably all of his feet.

The next day, sightseeing, including the whimsical creations of Gaudi, some curly Nouveau ornamentation, and gargoyles.

It's just a gorgeous city for walking and gawking. However, a not-so-pretty sight we saw numerous times in Barcelona was junkies. One unfortunate soul was in a nod across from us on the subway. Her tattoo said "Hoy" ("today"), where her watch should have been. Maybe she wakes up and goes, "What time is it? Oh, it's today...still..." One big, long today. Oy is right.

Another passerby wore a more helpful message on his person.

Readers, take this knowlege and remember it well.

We also started noticing Herbalife drones everywhere we went: the subway, walking around town, even up at Montjuic park, where the Olympics took place, we saw one of their branded cars.

They seemed so unreasonably happy sporting their Herbalife T-shirts and polo shirts and bike jerseys and fanny packs and badges in groups together that I formulated a theory: Herbalife is a cult. (I wonder how long until I'm inundated with pro-Herbalife comments, but whatever, I now have personal reason to dislike them, as you'll soon see.)

In that same park the f and I had twin nerdouts at the BarcelonaPavilion by the Bauhaus architect Mies van der Rohe, created for the World Fair in 1929. There, I was thrilled to see some of the original Barcelona Chairs.

We toured the incredbile beach recreational area on bikes. There were a few family-oriented beaches, and numerous others had DJs spinning for the beautiful sunbathers. But they weren't all beautiful. Lest the fiance get too healthy an eyeful of the topless young ladies, I made sure to point out an elderly woman who had chosen to go topless. This was to the f's utmost dismay, so of course I bring her up in conversation all the time and also drew this helpful illustration.

(Keeping it classy like always.) FYI the f was the one who had me extend the length of her breasts, for accuracy purposes.

Beach people in Barcelona have it made. They even have an ocean pool with diving boards, bordered by jettys, though unfortunately we didn't try it out.

For dinner our second night, we went to a seafood restaurant down by the water, where the fiance ate two monsters from Dungeons & Dragons for dinner.

Nasty. I acted rashly and got a vegetarian paella (aka rice with vegetables & spices) because I was so excited to see "vegetarian" on the menu. I should've gotten a traditional paella con mariscos. The wait staff was extremely distracted because the futbol semi-finals were on, and guess who was playing? Spain vs. Italy. Guess who won? Spain. We thought it would be a shitshow of celebration, but this time the reaction was fairly blase. They really are relaxed in Espana.

You know who was not relaxed? Us and most other diners around us. The Herbalife freaks were holding some kind of awards ceremony at the far end of our outdoor dining tent, involving them cheering and applauding at top volume approximately every five seconds. Why would the planners have thought this was okay? All hopped up on herbal pills, I suppose.

That's why I didn't feel too bad for the Herbalife guy whose juice opened up in his backpack and got all over his stash of pills. Who's applauding now? The restaurant manager put down sawdust on the juice spill on the ground as if someone had vomited. That was a concern to the manager, but apparently the ongoing hooting and hollering had not been. I love me some Barcelona, but a few aspects of the place didn't make sense to us, like why apparently no subway linked up directly to the train station.

Overall, though, I highly recommend Barcelona, and we're definitely going back to Spain.

By the way, in Spain they have commercials like this: