Tell your mom that you're not coming home tonight

Okiedokie.

What up everyone? How are you? I hope you are doing well, I sure am. So what has happened lately? Who cares!

As I sit outside, enjoying a nice cold beer something occurs to me. I am sitting outside, on a Monday enjoying a nice cold beer. It’s a Monday. This shit never happens in Iowa City. Maybe it would happen on the first nice day of pseudo-spring because we all know in Iowa Spring doesn’t actually come about until April and it even snows in April so it’s really just a crapshoot. That fucking groundhog couldn’t predict the weather in Antarctica even though all he would have to say is, “It’s going to be cold!”

But seriously, it’s Monday and having a beer seems perfectly acceptable. I’m even planning on buying two and bringing them to class to watch during our movie screening. The thing is, beer is just so gosh darn cheap that you don’t think twice about buying one. Like the waitress literally just walked by and I just said “ano” (that means yes in Czech, totally different story there) because what’s 28Kc to me? A buck fifty? Sure I’ll take another beer and possibly go to class with a head buzz. When you head to lunch in the states everyone always orders water. Why? Because it’s cheap, free actually. Here you have to pay for water, unless you specify tap water, but I don’t know how to say that in Czech so fuck it. dam si Pivo, prosim.

I definitely will not be coming home an alcoholic, possibly jaded and spend 6 months complaining about how cheap beer in the States sucks, but who knows? Maybe I’ll have some mystical vision when that goldeny goodness known as “Living the High life” passes my lips and swims down mi gulley hole.

I don’t have any insightful Americana references to make in this post. Life is pretty great, save for a very awkward Saturday night that shares similarities with that Drew Berrymore movie where she goes back to High School and David Arquette plays her younger brother who is way cooler than her and there’s the black dude in the surveillance van who is a total ladies man (you catch my drift?). Yeah well something along the lines of that movie. I think Joe Fawell received a 3am voice mail regarding it.

However, the night before was also interesting. My lovely Kiwi had recently moved into her flat and Friday was her flat warming party. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Michael and I just hoped for no paupers and tons of damsels. Enroute to the party Michael received a text from Tess requesting that we come speaking English with her. Not a good start. Tess moved in with two Czech girls. I am not sure why expected everyone there to be speaking perfect English, probably cause it had something to do with it was a flat warming party for an English speaker but who am I to criticize? That must be how babies feel when they have their 1^st birthday party and all these people are there, none of whom said baby is even friends with and they’re saying words instead of spitting, crying, laughing and giggling although those things may happen later on. But similarly, at a baby’s birthday party the guests will still crouch down, get real close to the child and baby talk he or she. Part of me feels like that’s what was going on when I spoke English with the Czechs. But it’s the reverse. I speak simply so they can quickly understand but I still feel like I’m being talked down to. That isn’t to say I didn’t meet some nice people at the party. The crowd was eclectic and rather hip. Honestly, aside from the cultural differences I didn’t feel anymore out of place than I would at a Chicago hipster party. The girls were smug, the guys were smugger and I just wanted to fucking dance to Wu-Tang Clan and sneak Birth Rites on to the stereo.

I did however meet the head editor and publisher of the Czech Vice Magazine, I got his card n’shit, he seemed like a super cool dude, and if all else fails after college, maybe he’ll hook it up with an internship? Pavel? You reading dis? What do you say?

He probably isn’t reading it.

I think The Vice would be a good jumping off point to a life in the indie-music scene. Pitchfork here I come?

Speaking of Pitchfork have you listened to my new myspace? Myspace.com/pumbabeatz

Pumba has been in existence for almost 3 years now.

It started as a way to spend my sore-throat provoked nights of solitude in the Currier ITC. The Macs there had midi keyboards so I just started creating music on garage band. Although I have only made 10 or so songs in my whole career, it’s a great way for me to push myself not only musically, but as a song writer. I get to control everything. I am my only naysayer and I am only limited by my own musical knowledge.

Every song has sounded different than the one before it, but there is still a “pumba” sound. It usually revolves around reverb and distortion. Lately, I have given into the whole lo-fi scene. It’s awesome. I feel like I am part of something. A silent contributor to the lo-fi music scene, making songs in cafes of Prague. Think anyone else is doing it as well? Maybe one day I will meet a fellow Garage Bander here and she will be a beautiful girl and we will create an unstoppable duo!

Anyway, I should go to class. Love you all!!!! Sorry for the abrupt ending.

I'll take my coffee with a side of America please

Hello USA and European friends who read this. You may have been asking, “Where the fuck is Greg? He’s not updating his blog anymore. Is he dead? Have you talked to him? No? Me either! Ugh! What is his deal? Does he not care about us? That son of a bitch!”

Well my apologies everyone, but there is no way in hell that I am going to fill you in on what has occurred the past two weeks, I’ll just let you know that Prague is getting more and more awesome, and I’ve made some great friends so far although none of them like Trail of Dead, Desaparecidos or Titus Andronicus but I’ll deal.

Sorry for the delay I had to put some more sugar in my Espresso. Let’s talk about that first, coffee. What do I have to do to get a big piping hot cup of black coffee? Well I have to go to Starbucks. That’s fine, I have no problem paying 50Kc for a cup of Starbucks coffee because none of the other cafes will hook a brother up with some regular ole’ joe. I caught a lot of flak from my southern hemisphere counterparts for my love of plain coffee. Sorry if I think a macchiato is a little metro sexual. Howoever, one great thing about every café in Prague is the hot chocolate. The hot chocolate in this city usually costs a little over 2 bucks and makes the stuff I sold at the Lake Ellyn Boat House look like, well, Swiss Miss is shit anyway so it looks like Swiss Miss.

The name of the café I am currently located is unbeknownst to me but I lovingly refer to it at as the Hobbit café because the ceilings are very low. It’s a solid place even though the coffee is not that great. It’s pretty hidden for being just outside Old Town Square. I would have never found it had it not been for my lovely Kiwi café aficionado Tess. She’s great for exposing us to cool little cafes in Prague. She’s also great to hang with in said cafes.

But enough of the wimpy touristy stuff like cafes. Let me dispel something that has been stewing inside me the past few weeks.

As most of you are aware Titus Andronicus’s new album “The Monitor” dropped a few days ago. Thanks to the ever so charming Jon Phillips I was hooked up with a leaked copy almost 2 months ago. This album is so American it might as well have come with your very own American Flag. The very first thing you hear is a paraphrased excerpt from a speech Abe Lincoln gave back when he was a mere 29! It basically says that America is impossible to invade and that European countries could never possibly cross the Atlantic and give us hell. If the United States is to be demolished our demise must come from within. The song then continues to rep Jersey (Hi Mom!) the Merrit Parkway (Hey Connecticut!) Springsteen (Hey Jarrett!) and J Mascis (Hey Jack!!!).

The song does not make me homesick, rather it fillms me with this overwhelming sense of American pride, something I never really ever felt back home. Being in Europe makes m proued to be an American. Even though the pubs and clubs play terrible American music, it’s nonetheless American music. It crossed the Atlantic and found its way into almost every establishment in this town. The only European acts to do that for the US died off long ago save for Radiohead, Oasis, and Blur, but they’re all English, hardly Czech and barely European. So using what Abraham Lincoln preached back in the 1850s about how Europe could never invade and take over America, the opposite is not true. I don’t mean to sound like some raving Sarah Palin supporter who thinks that European countries suck and that the only place worth living in is the US. Europe is awesome. However, I am taking a Czech national identity class with a bunch of Czech kids and several other Americans. Basically, the Czechs ask us about national identity in the US and my fellow Americans and I ask them about theirs.

It’s peculiar because they admit to not having one, whereas I sit there and just gloat about Jefferson, Lincoln, Payne, Hancock, Washington, Adams, Lincoln and other great American thinkers.

I am not sure where I wanted to go with this. I just wanted to confess that I love America, maybe not Americans but the idea that was so optimistically proposed back in 1776. Maybe this is my great revelation that so many encounter when they go abroad. Maybe that’s why it was once so popular for American gentlemen to cross the sea and experience the old world. Not to learn to love Europe but to instill a greater appreciation for the new world.

I made some Russian friends who were very curious about why I chose Prague. They did not have a choice. They were told by their school that they can go to Prague to study but receive no credit and must return in May to take exams for classes back home which they never attended because they were here, taking other classes. What up wit dat? Come on now Russia, Communism ended 20 years ago, you lost, let the people live! No wonder no one smiles in this part of the world, they have no idea what freedom is. Sure pot is legal and you can smoke inside everywhere and drink when you’re 18, but freewill? What is freewill? Oppression is so passé.

When I go home in 4 months people will ask me, “What did you learn in Prague?” And I think the only answer I can give, at least at this point, is that I love America. Even though, I may turn my head when I see a group of American students in a café or pub being loud and boisterous. But they aren’t America, they are merely an export just like Smash Mouth and Miley Cyrus. My America resides on the street where we used to go stargazing, within the pages of Washington Irving and Ralph Waldo Emerson. It lives in the old Bro House basement, on the stage at the Mill, on Lake Ellyn during a cold starry winter night or Fawell’s backyard, at the bottom of a Pabst Blue Ribbon can, or bottle of Jim Beam.

I don’t want you all getting worried about my wellbeing here after reading this. I am having a GREAT TIME! I am in no rush to leave. Maybe part of that is because I love feeling like an American. Perhaps when I return home said patriotism will be diluted. I can tell everyone one thing though. What I miss more than anything or anyone (sans Mom) are my drums and my guitar. Well I guess I miss the people I play them with just as much. It’s an awful feeling knowing I won’t be on stage ripping BR or Zak Slaybaum songs for at least another 5 months. Though, you can bet your bottom dollar when that moment comes I will play with the biggest smile in the history of smiles or music.

So with that I bid you all adieu, I will attempt to write at least weekly from here on out.

p.s. I have a date with a French girl tomorrow. YAW WHAT UP PARIS!?