TeacherTraveler: Ukraine

America: Back!

2007-11-12T20:13:00.000-08:00

Yes, I am back in the States. Got in on two Sundays ago and have been spending time with the family. This included a Halloween thing at Disney with my niece who was, and this is not conjecture but based on empirical fact, the most adorable Snow White ever. For the record, I was some sort of pusticle-sporting zombie thing thanks to the wet-on tattoos my sister brought over since she disagreed with my conjecture that my Halloween costume would be "Snow White's Uncle".

I'm in Orlando for about another week before heading up to Augusta, Georgia for about a couple of weeks with the dual goals of finishing editing my film and spending time with my father, whom I haven't spent more than a few dozen hours with since I was 16. It's time for both of those to be taken to the next level.

I've been off the radar for a while because, frankly, I didn't want to tell anyone what I was doing. The last month in Ukraine saw me getting connections in Ukraine with both ANTIFA and Skinhead groups in Zhytomyr and Kyiv. ANTIFA is a group of guys that get together and find skinheads to beat up. They asked me to come film them doing it, but the night I went out with them, they didn't find any. After contacting the skinheads, the ones from Zhytomyr threatened me, but the Kyiv skinheads surprisingly opened up and gave me hours of interviews about their beliefs, how they recruit and train others and about their "actions", where they find Jews or minorities and beat them up. One of the interviewed skinheads was wanted by the cops and another was awaiting trial in January for the murder of a Korean, who died in the hospital after being beaten up by the skinheads. They also asked me to come film one of their actions. Although it would have been strong footage for the documentary, after some soul searching I declined. I simply could not watch someone being beaten up and not intervene. The fact that I was willing to film ANTIFA do the same to skinheads is a hypocrisy I don't feel like exploring.

That footage, along with many, many interviews with Jews who had been attacked in what the Jewish media, at least, is calling a "surge" in antisemitic activity in Ukraine, is now what will be the film, with the Holocaust interviews and footage serving as a historical framework.

I've settled into my new place (I'm renting the second floor of a friend's two story house) and set up my editing work station. Editing isn't as exciting as shooting, but it's not as exhausting, either, and I've welcomed the slow pace of life after months of what felt like living on marshrutkas and trains, always at the beck and call of a text message that might possibly lead to an interview.

In any case, it's good to be back.

Ukraine: Nearing the End

2007-09-13T06:30:00.000-07:00

So life has been pretty interesting in the month or more since I last posted. I've visited a number of other cities, from really antisemtic Lviv in the west (covered in swastika grafitti and some 80 percent of people interviewed on the street had something bad to say about Jews) to pretty-inclusive Poltava, where people stopped on the street railed about what little antisemitic graffiti there was up (of course it was up; you can't escape it in Ukraine, save, perhaps, in Odessa). But ironically it was there that I talked to not one, but two rabid antisemites. Both pulled out books to show me. One was by Vasiliy Yaremenko. The other was by David Duke. Small world. I had contacted David Duke by email to get his permission to use excerpts from his radio broadcasts in the documentary. He wrote back and agreed. Former Klu Klux Klan member, former Representative from Louisiana, he's authored some bestselling (in Eastern Europe anyway) books about a Jewish conspiracy to control the world. He's also recieved a doctoral degree from MAUP, a university in Ukraine infamous for publishing literature of similar themes. He is ardently anti-zionist, some would say antisemetic, although that kind of talk gets you sued. The week before I had interviewed Yaremenko on camera, who is also a director at MAUP and he spoke for a long time about how Jews are in complete control of Ukrainain politics and finances and responsible for the millions of Ukrainian deaths in a famine manufactured under Stalin in the '20s. He told me, at interview's end and when the camera was off, that if I said he was antisemtic in the film or misrepresented his words, he would sue me. It's not an empty threat: MAUP has sued pretty much anyone who has said it or Yaremenko is antisemitic for slander. I'm not worried: I have no intention of saying he is antisemtic or misrepresenting him. I'm just going to put what he said in the film and let people make their own decisions. I did get thrown of MAUP's campus later, though. I was interviewing students, all of whom (of course) said positive things about the university and all (but one) admitted they didn't read the publications that MAUP is so infamous for. Then security escorted me off. I was on the sidewalk getting interviews from students and had every right to be there, but security kept bugging me to leave and was intercepting me from talking to students. So I got some shots of a kiosk of theirs selling books about the "Jewish question" with them continually asking/telling me to leave but hamstrung by the fact that they could not actually make me do so on the sidewalk. Part of it is on tape, although when they told me to turn the camera off I did because, I don't know, I'm not a complete jerk and I sympathize: they don't want me interviewing their students without permission and its the response most universities would have. It's made me think a lot lately. I could so easily put forth all this stuff about MAUP making it look bad and then toss in, without commentary, these three guards, pointing me off campus and people would go: "look, they're scared becaues they know they're antisemetic" and, really, that's too easy and facile. These issues are so touchy, especially here, that I'm really commited to making as serious and balanced a work as I can without resorting to Michael Moore type tactics (which I say with all respect considering his films started my interest in documentaries, but if you ever deconstruct "Bowling for Columbine" you realize how easy you can lie or mislead via editing).

Still, those books that the antisemites (and they proudly labeled themselves antisemites, so no worries about libel there) had seemed to have left an impression. Both, one on camera and the other off, vehemently went on about Jewish control in Ukraine. The off camera one's suggestion was to "do something" but was unsure what. The on camera one had less ambiguity: "kill them all." I brought up a Jewish woman I had interviewed several weeks before: she had just been attacked with her husband in Zhytomyr, and she was left in the hospital for two weeks. She has 8 kids. Did he really agree with that kind of violence. "Yes," he said. "She hasn't done anything to you," I said. "She's raising 8 more Jews who will likely become Zionists." Even he agreed, though, that his views were in the extreme minority in Ukraine, but only because Ukrainians hadn't yet "woken up" about it.

With his interview, I finally felt I had enough sides: official and street, Jewish and anti-Jewish, to give a depiction of the status of Ukraine today. I still have some stuff I'm shooting here and there and couple more interviews lined up, but I've even been closing off the tap of interest in talking to me because I'm at risk of overflowing and my main job now is get rid of everything I don't need.

Both sides have threatened to sue me, though, including the head of the Union for the Council of Soviet Jewry for Ukraine. He's a great guy, actually, but he's just as worried about being represented as everyone else. It's nice to know I've got everybody worried, though. I once heard that a perfectly balanced journalism piece on a controversial topic is one that pisses off both sides. If one is happy, it's because you leaned too much their way.

Possibly I should have just made a film only about antisemitism in Ukraine. It wasn't where I originally started and I don't know that many people would find it interesting divorced from the story of the Holocaust in Ukraine. Especially, as everyone points out, if you want to do a story on antisemtisim in Europe, go to Russia. But the holocaust story in Ukraine has been the most frustrating because historical footage and photographs have been extremely hard to get a hold of, at least in the quality I need for showing in a film. The archives in Ukraine are a beaurcratic nightmare and the one in America is obscenely expensive ($15 per photo, and don't get me started on film). Someone explain to me why I decided my first film should be an historical one in a foreign country and requires the use of four languages?

I've been milking the networking. The path of the holocaust is well-trodden, at least by museum exhibitors. It's a matter of getting their permission and materials. I thought I had a good thing going at the Lviv museum. Three days spent having coffee with the curator and together we got permission from the director. But all those photos are on a hard drive she didn't have access to because the person was on vacation. And now they don't want to mail them to me and I think said currator is avoiding my phone calls. I think I'm going to have to make another trip there to try and get those materials. That's okay, there's also a crazy rabbi there to interview. They tried to set his door on fire, among other things, but he also talks nonstop in a stream of conciousness way (he once went on for half an hour on the phone with me, me not saying a word, about the numerical importance of the sabbath. The question I had asked him was "when did this happen?" refering to the door-on-fire incident. He actually never answered that question.

I also have a contact through a contact with the Kyiv archive and another contact through a contact for the Zhytomyr one (although that one tried to milk me by trying to sell me "archival" footage, which turned out to be bootlegged DVDs of BBC documentaries on the war dubbed in Russian. I did pick up some of them off him both for goodwill and to use the footage as temp footage during editing until I get access to higher quality. I'm hoping he'll come through on photographs). All of this stuff is public forum, even by Ukrainian law, but it's a matter of getting good quality scans.

It all should be wrapping up soon, though. Editing is coming along well, but slowly, and my intention to completly edit in Ukraine has been changed by changing visa laws. I was all set to get on a train to Poland last night to stay for as long as it took me to walk back over to Ukraine. Why? Because Americans get a 90 day stay for free. People had been leaving and coming back every 90 days to work in Ukraine (as had been my intention) when not one, but two people tipped me off at dinner AN HOUR before I was to get on the train that they had just changed the visa rules that if you came in under the 90 day thing, you had to leave for 6 months before you could do it again. So I might have gotten off in Poland with only a change of clothes and a tooth brush and had not been able to get back in again, with all my stuff still in zhytomyr. As is, I talked to the American embassy and the best bet is to do what other people have done: overstay the 90 days and pay a fine on the way out (between $18 and $140 depending on the border guard, but legally it can not be more than $140). I ate the ticket to Poland and went out with friends to a latin-themed dance club.

But I also don't like staying in the country illegally, so I'm going wrap things up and be out by the end of September. My ticket between Budapest and New York is moveable to when I want, but the New York to Orlando ticket is October 4th, moveable at $30 a time, so I might as well make that the target date.

Right now I'm babysitting a scanner in Kyiv, scanning orginal documents left by the Nazis. It's about 50 large leaflets dealing with Jews in '41-'42. Announcements to go the the ghetto and how much they could bring, announcements that aiding Jews would bring a death penalty, announcements proclaiming to Ukrainian that the horrors of the Soviet Unions were due to Jews, and announcements for "relocation" and for Jews to gather for it, which is when they would take them outside the city and shoot them. Little of it is of use in the film, it's all in Russian or Ukrainian and has nothing visual, but since I came upon this small cache of documents at a small institute in Kyiv (friend of a friend thing again) I've decided I want to preserve it. A lot of what I've found and will get is going on the web, so others can have less trouble finding and using these materials. I hope to create a small, free online archive of sorts of scanned original materials so that people can use them in research or documentaries.

Anyway, in all liklihood I'll be back in Orlando October 4th, laden with hard drives laden with stuff. Wish me luck!

Ukraine: Documentary, July 28

2007-07-28T02:08:00.001-07:00

Left Odessa last night after four days of filming and four nights of partying.

Odessa started off badly. My main reason for going was to film the new mass grave they found last month. More than 11,000 Jews had been executed and buried there, only discovered when workers were digging to lay wires. My contact with the Jewish center here said I could get in with a team that was going daily to the grave to examine it. He said that last week when I bought the ticket, but the day before, when I called to see if we were going the day I got off the train (I was arriving at 6 AM), he said just to come down, meet him at 10: 30 and we would talk about it.

I met him. He said work had already finished, but gave me information about how to get there. It was outside a village. There was only one bus there per day, 4.5 hours. Once there, I would need to find someone to take me in for the night. I called the contact there he gave me. She told me there wasn't much to see, but that I was welcome to come. The bones had been reburied, leaving only a dirt and sand patch. Was that worth spending two days going out to?

I talked to my contact. Aren't there photos, videos? Sure. Who has them? He's not sure.

***

Another frustration was a lack of a place to stay. I was crashing the first night with a Peace Corps Volunteer, but he was leaving the next day. I knew three other Ukrainians in Odessa (had dated two of them) and they knew I was coming down. Surely someone would have a place for me to sleep. I called. Two were leaving town that day, one rented a room from a woman and was not allowed to have guests. Hmm. Should have planned this all better. But then said Peace Corps volunteer introduced me to four other volunteers in Odessa on vacation. Together, we rented an apartment. Craziness ensued.

***

The next day I had a follow-up interview with a holocaust surivor that I had interviewed the previous day. He took me out to the spot where his family had been murdered, along with 10,000 other Jews. He, a boy at the time, had escaped in the melee. He was one of three holocaust survivors I interviewed in Odessa, all of their stories heartbreaking. One had a friend whose mother had saved her daughter by putting her back to the firing squad and holding her daughter in front of her. She fell into the pit dead, but the daughter was unharmed. When the daughter--whose name was Sofika--crawled out of the pit, she came face to face with a German soldier left to guard the pit. He pointed his gun at her, then lowered it, letting her leave. She came to a house and the woman there took her in, told her to forget she was a Jew and then raised her. Sofika--who did not look Jewish--changed her name to Dasha, grew up, married a Ukrainian and had two children, who never learned their Jewish heritage. When the woman I interviewed ran into her long after the war, Sofika/Dasha begged her to keep her heritage secret. It was only until after the fall of the Soviet Union and Sofika/Dasha felt it was okay to talk about.

***

With getting to the grave a bust, I decided to explore the other incident I thought would be worth filming:

Odessa had about 700 graves at the Jewish cemetary defaced withswastikas in May. I was told that they'd been cleaned and it wasn'tworth going out there, but I decided to see if I could at least speakto someone. I introduced myself to the caretaker and he said hedidn't want to talk about it, on camera or at all, and, no, there wasno one else I could talk to. He was being a bit of a dick, actually.So we stand there for a few minutes, me debating my options (none) andhe asks if I smoke. I say I do, thinking he's asking to have acigarette with me and maybe I'll massage this into him talking. Heasks if I have matches. Oh. I don't.

He complains he's askedeveryone coming into the cemetary for two hours and no one has, hencehim not smoking. I leave. It's on the outside of the city, but afterabout ten minutes of walking I find a kiosk, buy a pack of Malborosand two lighters and head back.I hand him a lighter and we both sit down on a bench. I smoke one I just bought, taking the smoke into my mouth without inhaling yet (BillClinton was right, it can be done) until we're both down to thefilter. We do this without speaking, and then he says "What do youwant to know?"

By now I have learned to not ask a single question or, in fact, letanyone speak until the camera is out. People have the tendency tojust start talking, camera or no, and when they start it's usually themost important stuff. So I take out the camera. He doesn't want tobe on camera. So I point it to the distance figuring I'll get shotsof his hands or whatever. He says it can record his voice, but thecamera has to be in the bag. So I hook up a shotgun mic, it's cordnow trailing into the bag, which he confirms is closed. Then hestarts talking. It's not top secret shit, either, just what he foundand how long it took them to clean it off and he's kind of annoyed athaving to do the work, and there's also a tinge that he doesn't likethe Jews either. Not that they deserved it, but that he's got toclean up graves because of something going on between them and theskinheads.So we wrap it up and I'm wondering what I'm going to do with just avoice. Overlay images of the defaced graves? Who do I get thosefrom?

I had already asked about them, but no one seemed to know who would have them. The caretaker--Sergei--seemed to think it was a waste of time to filmthe graves at this point, but I needed some kind of imagery. After mehassling him, he pointed to which area they were in. And I wasfucking jaw-dropped when I got there. Grave after fucking grave stillhad the swastikas on them. Some had been scrubbed to where there was only a ghost of them, some just had the red paint in between carvedletters, where scrubbing was too much effort, but a number seemed tohave not been cleaned at all. Within fifteen minutes I had shot atleast 40 graves with recognizable swastikas on them, all the worsebecause many of the graves had pictures of the deceased carved intothem, so there's a swastika right over their faces. One--of aswastika right over the face of this 8 year-old boy, was heartbreaking. Most of the graves had fencing around them, a traditionhere, so it meant the people who did it climbed over 700 differentfences to paint that many graves. Fucking A.

And the fact that anattempt had been made to clean them meant that they'll remain that wayuntil the paint is finally weathered off. You could probably come inten years and still see them.

Despite that, Odessa is quite anti-antisemitic. What few antisemiticgraffiti I saw was crossed out with ANTIFA painted below (which standsfor anitfasism) and I saw far more ANIFA graffiti, including stenciledspray paints of a silloutte tossing a swastika in a trash can andwriting like "death to fasisim" and "die Nazi scum". I also saw farmore anti-NATO graffiti and hammer and sickles, meaning Odessa'sconcerns are quite different from say, Zhytomyr and Lviv, which iswhere hard-core Nationalism is on the rise.In the end, I lucked out with Sergei. Another guy, Pavel, was therewhen I returned from the graves, carving a headstone set up on two sawhorses. That was visually interesting, so I asked to film it, and heagreed, provided I didn't show his face. He had helped clean thegraffiti on the graves as well, telling me about it with the camerapointed at the headstone. Sergei came over after a while and jokedwith Pavel, me making sure to keep the camera pointed down and not really seeing where it was pointed but hoping to catch anything goodthey might say on the mic. I looked at the footage later, though, andit's about three minutes of Sergei's hands on the shiny granite, halfhis body reflected but not is face. It was the perfect "anonymous"image to go with his voice and I didn't even mean for it to happen.

***

I spent three days hassling everyone I could meet about getting photos or videos of the mass graves or the cemetary defacement. The secretary at the Jewish Cultural Center took to glaring at me the second I walked in. I hated to be a problem to anyone, but at the same time if you don't push in this country, it doesn't happen.

Finally I got a hold of the press guy for the Synagogue. I met him at his office. He had deleted those photos, he told me. What? Well, maybe this other guy had them on his computer, but he was in Israel. Maybe my frustration leaked through, because he asked me to wait and went to make some calls. I really felt low. All the way down here, burning money that's not coming back anytime soon, to not get any useable evidence of this grave. The Holocaust testimonials and the footage from the cemetary was great, but I had pinned a lot of hope on this mass grave. I hoped to bookend the film with the grave's discovery. It made the film timely, that more than 60 years later, we were still finding graves from this relatively unknown part of the Holocaust.

The press guy comes back with a piece of paper with a code on it. Had he seriously just called this guy in Israel? He punches the code into this other guy's computer and is soon rooting through photos. He finds them and transfers them to my ipod. Then he says "maybe you could use this," and holds up a DVD. He pops it into the computer and it's RAW FOOTAGE of the graves the day they were found, including INTERVIEWS WITH THE PEOPLE WHO FOUND THEM. "You can take this and copy it if you want," he said, my eyes bugging out of my head. "Who shot this?" I asked. "Who do I need to ask for permission to use it?" "Oh, it's ours," he said, "we bought it off of a television station." "Can I get written permission from you to use this in my film?" "Yeah, I'll just get the rabbi to do it when he gets back."

I practically ran down the street to find an internet cafe and had them copy the disk. I had them check it twice before I gave it back and still occassionally find myself patting it in my backpack.

The next day, the press guy, who I still want to kiss as I type this (in a very hetero-masculine way), said he found where to get photos of the defaced headstones. He couldn't get them before I left, but he promised he'd put them on disk and give them to the volunteer in Odessa, who can mail them to me. And when the rabbi gets back he'll see about getting permission.

It was like a three day knot unwound from my body. I spent my last five hours in Odessa on a beach with another volunteer, playing beach volleyball, swimming in the Black Sea, listening to music pumped out from a PA system (interrupted repeatedly by offers of a free SIM card from the mobile company sponsoring the music) and oggling the many beautiful sights (Ukrainians don't have much problem with sunbathing topless).

Life is good.

Ukraine: Documenary, July 22

2007-07-22T01:54:00.000-07:00

The film finally has a working title:

Black Earth: the Holocaust and Antisemitism in Ukraine

"Black Earth", of course, refers to Ukraine's famed black earth, but possibly people won't know that. I like the associations with the sins and the mass graves, but I can also see someone thinking it's about African-Americans.

Interviewed the director of the Zhytomyr branch of MAUP, theuniversity that puts out the antisemitic lietrature. It was a he, now it's a she. I don't know why he was suddenly replaced, but at least she was willing to talk. We talked aboutMAUP having its accredidation pulled, but when I moved onto theliterature, she said she never actually read the stuff THAT THEYDISTRIBUTE AT THEIR SCHOOL.

Interviewed the cop who is responsible for the rabbi attack case. Hedidn't want to talk on camera, but the camera was on my shoulder andpointing off at an angle, so I switched it on anyway. He doesn'tthink they'll catch the guys who did it, but said they were steppingup patrols near the synagogue.I interviewed the rabbi who had been attacked the next morning. Allthe Jews have been cautious about saying anything bad about theauthorities on camera, but he was so livid that he was tearing intotheir lack of effort and their constant denial that any attacks areantisemitic vs. acts of hooliganism. The problem: Daniel didn't havethe camera switched on. I had turned it on during set-up because hewas working on his computer and I figured I could use it for cutshots, but when I had the mic ready and was starting the interview, Imust have instinctively hit the record but (no memory of doing this,but it's what must have happened) because next thing I know the camerais powering down from being left idling too long and when I switch itback on I notice only a minute of tape has rolled (the minute from set
that, but I missed his initial outburst about the cops. Grr.

He andI are still supposed to have a lengthy sit down interview about a broad number of topics, so maybe I can get him to say it again. Went to Kyiv yesterday and was taken on a personal 3 hour tour of Babyn Yar by the head of the Judaica institute. She talked so much it took up 2.5 hours of tape and ran my battery into the ground. I thought it would be much briefer and left my back-up battery in Zhytomyr (I had forgotten to charge it the night before anyway) and as I watched the battery tick down I started to go to manual on everything, including the focus, to save power. Thing is, she standing still. We're walking all over Babyn Yar and I'm shooting handheld, monitoring sound, keeping focus, trying to understand her Russian and trying not to fall on all the rocks and branches (it's a big ravine). I was mentally exhausted by the end, but got a lot of good information. More to the point, she gave me permission to dig throughtheir archives. She says they have a number of photos from the war, which I should be able to scan myself. This is good, because the Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC wants $15 for EACH PHOTO that they give me on disk. Fuck that.

I'm also getting slightly raped by the archives here in Zhytomyr. FINALLY, after a whole lot of wrangling, I got access to the archives and it's a treasure trove. Page after hand-written page of tesitmonies and findings that the Soviets compiled on any bit of paper they could find (some of it is on the back of German maps), documenting what had happened in Zhytomyr and Berdichev during the war and then locking it all away. It even looks visually good: this thick folder of aging paper, and the writing is in various colors: blue, purple, red, black, with notes in the margins.

Problem is, I have yet to get permission tophotograph it (technically I should not be allowed to at all, but I'mholding out hope), and I couldn't even photocopy it because--had thephotocopier not been broken anyway--I need permission from thedirector for each PAGE copied, and when I do get that permission, eachone will cost me 7 UAH ($1.40) (so much for me planning on copyingeverything to have a small archive of my own). Marina and I jokingly concoted a plan for taking turns in the bathroomphotographing them with a digital camera, but we're not so stupid as to actually try it.

Still, that moment was a long time coming. I'd seen parts of thetexts already: there are microfiche copies of some of it in Yad Vashemand the Garrards (the authors who wrote the Bones of Berdichev)reference them in their book, but even they haven't seen the actualcopies, and there I was, with them in my hands, sitting at a desk andflipping through them. I didn't even want to give them back becausesome paranoid part of me worried that the next time I came back I'dhave lost permission to see them or that they'd have dissapeared.It's hard to explain how important these pieces of paper are to me.They aren't even typed Soviet reports or anything. It's thehandwriting from 60 years ago of a handful of NKVD officers goingaround saying "what happened here? what happened here?", andscrawling it down. It's as raw a first-hand account as we're going toget, completely untainted by the passage of time (as survivor'smemories are), although, of course, taininted by the politics of theday...

Ukraine: Documentary, July 17

2007-07-17T01:45:00.000-07:00

Two things happened that made me decide to stay until September: One, the rabbi of Zhytomyr was attacked. Again. Secondly, a company I worked with last summer on my climbing camp has greatly expanded themselves and now own a television channel and set themselves up a production studio. They have a documentary. They need someone to do the English translation and hock it in America. I need post-production work. They're not going to do it for free, but at a discount of what is already obscenely cheap compared to America.

This is a massive risk because when I go back, the teaching year will have started and there may be no slots. I might find a job, I might be waiting tables until next fall. But I now have enough faith in what I've filmed so far to think that this movie will sell. I never thought that before: it was a personal project. But I've gotten enough great footage--not just good, but great--that I feel I can make a powerful film with what I have, let alone some of the interviews I have been promised, which migh kick it up another notch (sorry to be vague, but unless I have something, I don't like talking about it).

On other news, A woman in Chicago who works for a company that doesDNA testing for Jews looking to find which graves hold their relativesheard about my project (from an attendee of a presentation I gave inTucson in March on the Holocaust in Ukraine; how random is that?). Ifilled her in on the status of the documentary and, finding that I wasself-funding it, she offered to find my some funding from hercontacts. She asked for a dollar figure and I have no idea how muchto ask for. I could finish the film for $2,000; I could finish it for$50,000 or more, depending. I have been afraid to crunch numbers because I didn't really want to think of how difficult it might actually be to finish the film when it comes to post. But I've now started doing all the research to put the final budget together.

Somone finally came through with finding me some skinheads. Twogroups, one in Kyiv and one in Zhytomyr have been informed I want to talk to themand they are willing. The Zhytomyr group had already heard of me:apparently word has already gotten around that the American constantlyseen with a tripod strapped to his back is doing a film onantisemitism. I've also got a lead on an antisemtic group in Poltavathat holds regular meetings and wouldn't that be a hell of a thing tofilm...

Also, I found a perfect song for the film, by a Ukrainian group calledBoombox. It's called Kviti v Volocia ("Flowers in the hair " inUkrainian), but it's not so much the lyrics (about a couple who promise to be together forever, but the boy is called away to work overseas) as themood of the whole song. It's this slow, haunting melody on accousticguitar, punctuated occasionally with brief turntable scratching. Somesoft singing by the (male) lead singer in Ukrainian, then it kicks inwith a slow break drum beat, the guitar continuing and soon the guy iswailing over all it it. As soon as I heard it I was seeing the imageslaid over it of graffiti, broken gravestones, broken windows andsnippets of Ukrainians bashing on Jews (which, I've found have beenprogressively easier to get; Mariana I have been "bombing" inZhytomyr, Kiev and surrounding villages. She walks up, microphone inhand, me with and already turned on camera and starts asking aboutJews. Caught off guard they start talking and it's all unvarnished.Asking permission, we have found, gets us nowhere, and since it'sobvious the microphone is connected to a camera pointing straight atthem, it's not like they don't know what's going on). I had beenwanting to get a more modern, sad, but still obviously Ukrainian song. i think I've found it.At first, I thought I'd put together a "music video" for the film tothe song and toss it on YouTube, which the fundraiser in Chicago hassuggested I do to help her show people what I have so far. I figuredI'd never get the rights to the song for use in a distributed film asBoombox is a nationally known group here. But I mentioned wanting touse that song to a friend of mine last night. She reminded me of aguy who works at a Zhytomyr radio station that is friends with herbrother, who also works there (I met all of them about a year ago atan event put on by the station). He's friends with the members ofBoombox, who happen to live in Rivne, near where Jon used to live.Apparently they'd be cool with something like that and would probablywelcome the American exposure, she said. She's going to try to get mea meeting with them. And I have also become aquainted with a coupleof PR people working in Kyiv who are now bothering their mediacontacts about getting me footage that the news has shot for variousstories (finding the graves, the Torah scrolls being confiscated, MAUPloosing their accredidation, etc.).So, a lot of potential, but I'm not holding my breath. Still, I havefound telling every person I meet about the film means that usefulstuff gets back to me. Now we just have to see what comes through.Extending to September, though, was a good idea. Otherwise I'd be inan insane time crunch and if I've relearned anything, it's that stuffcan happen, it just takes a lot of time. Especially in Ukraine.

Ukraine: Documentary, Jul 3

2007-07-03T01:41:00.000-07:00

Life has picked up considerably. Spent two days interviewing warsurvivors and some of the stories are really heartbreaking, althoughfew are related to the Holocaust (even though the survivors areJewish, they survived because they fled as the Germans advanced; theirmemories are of living in Tajikistan or Kazakstan or Siberia until theend of the war).

One woman I met with today, though, was Ukrainianand hid Jews during the war. I know of a Fulbright Scholar in Lvivwho is also going to tell me about her main subject of research: apriest who hid dozens of Jewish children during the war. So at leastI am going to balance some positive with the negative of theHolocaust.

And in other positive news, the more I interview various people, themore interesting commanalities come to light. For example, I havethree different Ukrainian girls on camera saying that Jews make thebest husbands and they'd love to marry one. I also have six or morepeople, including the antisemites, saying that Jews are extremelysmart and three people saying that's why there's distrust and dislikeof them. Jews being an educated group is not an amazingly newstereotype, but how much it's mentioned here, I realized that togenerations of non-educated Ukrainian farmers, that would stand outparticularly. Also, I have a few Jews (possibly too proudly for theirown good) also saying how smart and talented Jews are compared to therest of the world. I honestly would have thought of "jealousy ofeducation" as being a laughable excuse for antisemitism at best but ithas come up so frequently that Ihave to consider it as a possiblemotivation.

I'm about a week and a half into shooting and I have about 8 hours offootage, about a 1/3 of it useable and some of it very beautiful. I'malso learning that I have a lot more to learn about how to do thiswell, especially with limited equipment and only myself or on occasionmy friend Marina as crew. Take today, which turned out well but wasfrustrating at the time. The lesson: how difficult it can be to getgood sound out of someone you're interviewing on the fly because youcan't interrupt them to get a mic onto them. I had a camera that hadthat handled: it could handle a camera-mounted shotgun mic and awireless lavalier mic on two channels. I accidently broke that camerathe day I was supposed to fly to New York. Insurance should becovering it (keep fingers crossed), but I'm using the back-up camerawhich doesn't have the mounts or inputs, so either I have a handheldmic, the on camera mic (which sucks) or a lavalier mic.

Today: I'minterviewing the caretaker of the Jewish Cemetary in Zhytomyr, whichhas a lot of broken gravestones from skinheads defacing the place, buthe's not keen on doing an interview at first (I have learned inUkraine that asking for an interview will get you a "no". Turning thecamera on and starting to ask questions seems to be the best way togo) so getting the lavalier on him is not going to work. Marina isholding the shotgun mic near enough to him and we're getting greataudio but then he gets excited about showing us (everyone seems torelax after the first few minutes and then they get into it) and takesoff and starts pointing things out and is now out of mic range. Soshe's running after him to clip the lavalier on him but doesn't get itswitched on and he doesn't seem to get that the transmitter should beon his belt, so he's waving it around while he talks. She finallygets it on, but meanwhile I'm switching the inputs between the twomics and loose a good good chunk of everything he has just said.

Oy.Still, got enough to get the gist: skinheads breaking tombstones, copsdoing nothing, cut to still shots of broken tombstones. Done.

Another point of pride: the director of the Zhytomyr branch of MAUP,the private Ukrainian university that is infamous for printing anddistributing antisemetic literature in Kyiv, didn't want to talk to usabout it and said to talk to the main people in Kyiv. But on Friday,and you should enjoy this, the Ministry of Education pulled MAUP'saccredidation. Their reasons were for technical violations, not dueto the hate material, but everyone knows that is why (the authorotieshave been trying to get them to stop printing the antisemiticliterature for months now; see, there is hope!). So I cornered himin his office today and he said that it was all for PR and that theschool would continue as normal. I asked for an interview on this newdevelopment and he declined. Then I refused to leave his office andhe was late for a meeting so, flustered, he promised me one next week. Possibly he didn't mean it, but I then went and talked to hissecretary and I'll get her to schedule it. He did promise, afterall...

Going to another city tomorrow that was the site of the first plannedmassacre of Jews during the Holocaust (23,000) and then will be goingto Odessa tomorrow night or the next day to shoot some footage of thenew mass graves they discovered there.

I declined the New York job because I wouldn't be back in time,but then they said I could still have it provided I got to New Yorkbefore August 20th. Since that is very doable, I accepted. I'm notsure why: it will mean a flustered move and housing search, shittywinter weather and longer working hours and that will all cut intoediting the film.

Ukraine: Documentary, June 27

2007-06-27T01:34:00.000-07:00

The film is coming along in interesting ways. The Jewish school wanted one of their students to present about the holocaust in the little museum they have, buthe kept nervously moving around and I had to keep moving the camera tokeep in in frame (in retrospect, I should have just said "fuck it" andgone wide) and then his teacher kept interrupting and trying to showthis and that, but she's behind the camera. Thing is, a lapel mic ison him running into the camera, so I can only pick up what she'ssaying by pulling the plug and switching on the onboard mic, thenputting it back in when he starts talking again. So the result is thecamera swinging back and forth between the two of them and the soundconstantly cutting in and out as the mic is switching. It's prettyfunny to watch, but there's enough usable stuff in there to make itworth it.

I don't mind how bad some of the footage initially looksbecause I will be editing it, but then they asked for a copy of theraw footage and now I'm embarassed to give it.Went to the archives and spent four hours getting official permissionto access the historical documents related to the holocaut (as aforeigner, I had to get permission from the head director). Told himI wanted to interview him about the archive repossessing the Torahscrolls and he got really angry and refused. I asked who the officialspokeperson was that I could talk to and he realized it was him andthen grudgingly agreed to do it next week. I got him calmed down andsaid I just wanted to know the official side of things since Americansthought it was Ukraine being antisemitic (actually, most Americansdon't know about it, so I lied a little). He started talking, though,saying they took them back because the Jews had lost 90 meters of thescrolls (the Jews say those 90 meters never existed and it had beenmiscategorized; I should point out that these are a number of scrollsand scroll fragments). But the director, getting more comfortable,explained that now anyone could come see them whenever they wanted toand that they were much safer now. And then (God, I hope he says thison camera) he went on to say that the Jews should be thankful to thearchives for preserving the scrolls and keeping them safe after thewar. Actually, he has a point to this, but it still came off reallyhigh and mighty.

Getting people to say things on camera has been a problem. Myantisemtic friends that agreed to an interview started complimentingthe Jews as soon as the camera went on. Me: "But that's not what youtold me before." One of them: "I have changed my mind. That was along time ago." Me: "That was last week". "But I have thought aboutit and realized the Jews have done nothing bad to me" Me: "That'sgreat! Would you be willing to talk about how you used to feel andwhy you changed your mind?" Her: "No"Other open antisemites that my friends know have also refused to talkon camera. Understandable, but... Grrr.

Jews have also been unwilling to say anything bad on camera, fearfulof later retribution. Said one: "don't forget, we have to live here".I was getting a little frustrated, but hit a gold mine last night.The rabbi's assistant finally got back to me and was really honest.He's been compliling antisemetic incidents in Zhitiomir and apparentlyattacks have been happening about every three months. He gave me thenumbers of not just Jews who have been attacked, but those who havebeen attacked AND speak English. He's also going to take me to theJewish cemetery to show me the vandalism and smashed graves. He alsosays a lot of skinheads hang out there, so hopefully I can startmaking contacts with them and get interviews that way. He also calledover to a Jewish organization that provides fellowship parties forolder Jews, and when I talked to them today they said that there weremany who attend who were alive during the holocaust and that theyloved when young people were interested in their stories. They alsosaid recording them wouldn't be a problem and that it was important toget the stories captured.The rabbi's son's bar mitzvah is tonight and I was invited so that Icould meet other members of the community. Thing is, I don't haveformal clothes. The family I'm staying with, the father and son areboth taller than me, but one loaned me a shirt and tie and the otherloaned me pants. So I am going in these old, baggy clothes and tennisshoes. But I'm excited that I will be allowed to film there, so I canget some good b-roll footage of Jewish life here, and will put it ontoa disk so that the son can have some Hi-def footage of his barmitzvah.

So things are coming along. I am realizing that there is enough herethat I could be working way past when I would need to go back toaccept the New York job, or even teaching in Florida (which I stillhaven't secured a job for; no one wants to do phone interviews).Ironically, I was offered a job here in Ukraine that would havestarted in September and was only a four month contract. If I hadtaken it I could have finished filming, worked four months tore-infuse the bank account, travel a bit and been flown home for free. I passed on it, though, and now it's been filled.

Grr. I feel likeI have been very out of the flow lately, unsure of what I should bedoing and it's frustrating. I am used to things lining up andtrusting to getting where I'm going, but now I find myself unsure.

Ukraine: The Documentary

2007-06-22T00:42:00.000-07:00

I am in Odessa right now, about to finish an interview with a Holocaust survivor. I have decided to start updating the blog again in regards to the documentary. Filming has been going really well despite some hiccups, and I finally feel like I will have an end product worth watching, and so feel like I should acually start writing about it. I have been documenting the experience in emails and in my journal, but not on this blog. That will change, but it will take a while to catch everything up. So this comes from an email dated June 22, and as I get more time, more will get posted until the story up untill now has been posted.

***

I feel like filming on the documentary has finally started. I had shot some stuff in Ukraine earlier and an interview with an expert in the states, but the main course has begun. I interviewed a friendbeside some mass graves today. She told of how, when she was fifteen,she and classmates had to rebury the bones churned up by gravediggerslooking for jewlery they had heard the Jews had swallowed prior tobeing led away from their homes, not knowing (or refusing toaknowledge) that they were going to be killed. This had only been sixyears ago: with no money after the collapse of the Soviet Union, thisis what people had been driven to.And horrific as all that is (and, sadly, the more horrific the thingsI find, the more compelling the documentary becomes), it onlyreinforces a whole new angle I'm finding on this. Those casualantisemites [I wrote earlier of some friends I had dinner with who, when I mentioned the topic of the film, started ripping into Jews, but not in an angry manner] I had dinner with? Well, let's put it this way: we had totake turns at their little table. It's four people and a dog livingin a two room (not two bedroom, two room) apartment: the parents of myfriends' sister, the sister (very pregnant and due in two weeks) andthe sister's husband (who has invited me hunting with him). Soon itwill be five with the arrival of the baby. With my friend, me, andher daughter there, there simply weren't enough chairs and we tookturns eating dinner in the kitchen. This is their life. Much of theconversation centered on the impossibility of finding an apartment.The husband is in the army, the wife will finish university next year. They will continue living this way, with the addition of a baby, forthe forseeable future, disgruntled by every moment of it. So is itany wonder when they casually blame Jews for this and that? I askedthem, would any of them attack a Jew given the opportunity? No. Butthat doesn't mean they like or trust them. They don't even lump allJews together. There's Jews and then there's "Zhidi", which I took tomean Hassidic Jews from their description of the ear curls (by theway, one of the founders of Hassidism was born in Ukraine; smallworld) [NOTE: I later learned that Zhidi is the slang for "kike", so they were telling me the differences between Jews and kikes the way someone might tell you "there's differences between blacks and niggers". Those Jews, they said, they stay seperate, go to seperateschools, are told they are special. And of course they found thatthreatening. With as fucked up as the government is here, as corruptare the cops and judicial system, can't they wonder, believe, thatthere is something behind all this, profiting from all this? I can'tblame these people for how they feel. As they spoke, it seemed liketheir views were completely reasonable, save for the fact that, youknow, I knew that they were completely, morally WRONG. But as Ilistened, their story seemed as important as that of those sufferingfrom the violent results of this undercurrent of dislike.Being Jewish, you might not see it that way, but what it comes down tois that this hate doesn't spring fully-formed, that the cycles ofpoverty, oppression and hate have spun together for the entire historyof this country and it comes back again now, viciously as every hopethey had with the Orange Revolution has collapsed (to me at least, theskyrocketing of antisemetic incidents seems to coincide exactly withthe revolution's collapse)I can't speak for antisemitism in the world in general, but here Ifeel that there might be a chance to, I don't know, EXPLAIN it alittle, or a least peel back some of the layers over the motives.It just feels as if it all weaves together: strands of Judaism bornhere, being murdered here, casual poverty, casual hate. I have aninterview with the Zhytomyr rabbi tomorrow, who was, along with hisfamily, was beaten in broad daylight by skinheads. His assistant'sassesment of antisemitism in Zhytomyr when we talked yesterday? "Ne ochen ploha" (not too bad) People telling me there is no problem, people tellingme they have a problem, people just not caring either way. I feellike there's something here, compelling, worth documenting, even ifonly for me, even if only to teach myself HOW to to document suchthings on film (or HD digital, whatever). I've felt a trepidation fora while about all this, that it was going to overwhelm me, that I wasdiving into a project I didn't have the skills for (making adocumentary) and now I don't care if the end result turns out to beshit because I feel like I am in the middle of something right now, anexus of so many different ideas and images and opinions and factsand--despite all the horror--I feel glad to be here.

Balkans: What I have been doing

2007-06-16T07:17:00.000-07:00

For the past week I have been travelling around the Balkans (for the most part). This is what I have done:

I was taught traditional Hungarian folk dances by two girls from a troupe at a party overlooking the Danube, swum beneath waterfalls in Krka, free climbed cliffs to enter an inaccesible watchtower in Split, sea kayaked around old city walls in Dubrovnik, ran uphill to a fortress overlooking the largest fjord in Europe in Montenegro, met the perfect girl for me (who, unfortunately, had a boyfriend), stood atop a a mineret above a war-torn city in Bosnia, and got drunk on grape brandy on a beach today... Tonight to Poland, tomorrow to Ukraine, where hopefully I will have enough time to post the pictures and stories that I have collected on this amazing trip.

America: As of late

2007-05-13T09:49:00.000-07:00

People keep asking me when I'm going to update my blog. This is strange to me: I assume no one reads it. Originally I was really into it, updating it daily, because it was what I had meant it to be: a chronicle of my Peace Corps experience. But now that I'm back in America and teaching and not really travelling, there's not much to write about.

I mean, I could write about it. The things I could say about the school system would blow people's minds. But I also feel I can't say them because anything I say about a kid or a teacher or an administrator would probably bite me in the ass.

In two weeks I fly back to Eastern Europe. I will be heading an education project on the Holocaust and antisemitism. I will be directing a documentary on the same. I will be travelling. I will be rock climbing and seeing old friends. It will be amazing.

Will I have things to write about? I don't know. I find the desire not there. I still have to post that promised story from Vegas from TWO MONTHS ago and have not. And I realize it's because I got over the whole idea of blogging and the narcissim that goes with it. I told myself I was doing it to document Peace Corps for myself, so that in a decade's time i could look back at a journal I had created.

I did that, but now I have this blog and unsure what to do with it.

I keep wanting to make a final post that says: this blog is over. But I haven't brought myself to that point yet. But that's why I haven't been updating.

For those of you that do read it, though, I'm soon off on another adventure. Wish me luck!

America: Credit

2007-03-31T09:12:00.000-07:00

In general, I don't believe in debt. To finance a house, yes, but when it comes to cars, furniture and everything else, I say if you don't got the money, don't buy it.

I didn't go into debt for my undergrad or my Masters, and half of my Masters was paid out of (my) pocket. I had a Mastercard for a little while, but never used it and so cancelled it. Apparently that was a mistake. That card sat in my wallet (and, in my opinion provided a liability should said wallet ever get stolen) and in that time I was deluged with mailers for credit cards that I duitfully shredded.

Going into Peace Corps, though, I just cancelled the thing. But when I saw an offer for a Paypal credit card to finance something I wanted on ebay, I figured "what the hell?" But I was denied. And was flabbergasted. All I knew was that I had really good credit. Had there been fradulent activity? I ran a credit report.

No, no fradulent activity. It just turns out that having no credit card, no loans, nothing for more than two years actually increases your credit risk. So apparently healthy spending habits work against you.

Now I know.

I just applied for another Mastercard.

America: Spiderman (Pics)

2007-03-24T20:52:00.000-07:00

Okay, that really cool Vegas story will wait... Some 600 Wal-Marts all across the country today had a promotion for the Spiderman 3 movie using 600 guys in Spiderman costumes. I was one of them...

Took a lot of pictures, signed a lot of autographs, gave a lot of high fives. Other than the fact that my knees ache from squatting for four hours, it was pretty damn cool. And I'm $150 richer. Sadly, I have to return the costume. Sorry to ruin that fantasy, ladies.

The pics are courtesy of my mom, who came to see it. Yes, that really is me in there.

Spiderman unmasked! Tobey Maguire, eat your heart out!

America: Tucson, AZ and Las Vegas, NV

2007-03-21T19:58:00.001-07:00

So this is a story of Spring Break unlike any I've ever taken. I once took a Spring Break road trip out this way, also with a guy and a girl (Nick and Sarah). We visited six states and, in addition to visiting Las Vegas, went snow skiing, rented a wave runner, and visited Bryce Canyon, Zion and Capitol Reef National Parks. The difference between that event-packed one and this one was alcohol. You don't do much during the day when you've been drinking all night and so this is the first trip I've ever taken where the bulk of it was spent lying around a hotel. Still, despite how chill the trip was, it did have one very, very notable story, which will be in the next blog. Normally what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but not this time. But until then, here's the rest:

I flew into Tucson, where my cousin Miguel lives. He was working, so I was picked up from the airport by Amanda, who served in Peace Corps with me and now works on a horse ranch there. She picked me up in a pick-up truck while wearing a cowboy hat. I borrowed said hat. And when we went hiking in the Tucson foothills that day, she took this picture that I call "Cacti and the Cuban Cowboy"

Obligatory silloutte shot. Someone hurry up and put me in a cigarette ad!

Amanda contemplating the cacti of the world. Do they know that they so hurt?

The next day I presented at an OASIS conference and talked about the Holocaust and antisemitism in Ukraine. I was introduced by Carol Garrard, co-author of the Bones of Berdichev, whom I later interviewed on camera for my in-progress (amateur) documentary on this topic. This was the piece of paper outside the room.

Presenting. Apparently I talk with my hands a lot.

Miguel and Amanda getting their respective grooves on at a Tucson salsa club that night.

The next day we hopped into Miguel's car to drive 8 hours through the desert to Las Vegas. Somehow Amanda got out of driving. We're still not sure how that happened.

A little bit of mid-trip craziness. Yes, I did put a quarter in that thing.

Crossing the Hoover Dam into Nevada

Vegas, baby! The MGM Grand Hotel

The New York New York hotel. Yes, that is a hotel.

The Ballys and Paris hotels seen through the famous fountains of the Bellagio

The Coyote Ugly bar. We didn't realize how upscale the clubs on the Las Vegas strip were, and it was was the only one that would let us in wearing sneakers. But it had women dancing on the bar, so we didn't mind.

Miguel and I the next night, having dropped $100 each at a Ross to meet Vegas standards. Estillo Cubano!

We so lucked out: next door to our hotel was a Cuban restaurant with great food and better mojitos. We ate there literally every day.

The greatest painting in existance. Picasso, eat your heart out.

We took a break from the partying to head out to Red Rocks with two British guys we met at the Las Vegas Hostel. This is Amanda on the rocks.

Miguel trying a route. He has vowed never to climb rocks again.

Me setting a route. This is not fun to do with a hangover.

We are men. Men is what we are.

The Pussycat Dolls section of Ceasar's Palace. Yes, I did stare. I didn't gamble much: I was $40 up at one point and $20 down at another but, like always, I broke even.

Amanda, me and Miguel with a group we met at the Las Vegas Hostel, going out on our last night in Vegas

Amanda getting a whole lot of man loving...

This is Deonna. She is a prostitute. How do I know? Because after two dances she invited me to her room. Then she explained that this would be paid for. I declined and we kept dancing.

On the way back to Tucson, a tanker overturned, spilling caustic chemicals on I-10. We sat in this traffic jam for three hours. In addition to Amanda reading us excerpts from a romance novel and giving us quizes from a Cosmo, Miguel and I watched Dane Cook on my iPod. It was still a very long three hours.

The next day and my last of the trip. Before my flight, Amanda and I took a afternoon hike up Mt. Lemmon.

I need to walk around with a lighting kit giving me these exact shadows. For once in my life, my skinny self looks buff! Or maybe I'm just getting fat. Must be all the fast food I ate...

Fun trip

Teaching: Mad Science (Pics)

2007-03-04T17:08:00.000-08:00

So this is my Friday and Tuesday evenings. The pay is low but damn it's fun!

A lot of the experiments revolve around air pressure...like who can blow up the bag more.

My "vortex generator": a trash can with a hole in the bottom, a bungie cord and a piece of plastic. It launches out a column of air that you can feel fifteen feet away, made visible by filling it up with smoke from a smoke machine

Tap it the right way and you get smoke rings!

The kids have just blown out some candles using the vortex generator. The kid in the red shirt was slamming his whole arm against the plastic to get enough force to knock them out!

Using our magical, mystical science powers to get the water to change color... Actually, the water has a base in it and a base indicator that turns pink. When poured into vinegar (that looks like water), it neutralizes and turns clear.

More of my magical, mystical science powers making the ball levitate. Oh, wait, is that leaf blower between my legs?

This is just a fun trick... Basically, if you push the skewer through the darker spots of a balloon (where there is still some elasticity) and you do it fast enough, the latex will hold a seal around the wood and you can push it clean through without popping it.

The Mad Science dance. Her shaking it up (with the acetone I just poured inside it) will break down the plastic of the foam peanuts, releasing the air inside them and making them shrivel up into a piece of plastic the size of a quarter. Poof!

One of my favorites: Evaporated methanol + water cooler jug = Jet engine

Yes, they pay me to do this!

America: Work, Dammit! Work!

2007-02-18T17:10:00.000-08:00

Why have I not put up a post in two weeks?

So I got a job working for MadScience, doing science presenations for students. They took too long finding gaps in their own schedule to get me trained, so I applied to P.F. Changs as a waiter to get some money coming in.

P.F. Changs also took forever as I had to go through THREE interviews (this is their standard) and then they said they didn't think I was qualified enough to be a waiter ("we don't usually hire the type of people who have worked at TGI Fridays" said one manager). So despite three years of server experience, three years of teaching, two years of Peace Corps, two bachelors degrees and a Masters, they said "maybe we'll start you as a back waiter and and in a month or two we may move you up to server."

I took their training manual home and memorized every item on the menu, including their ingredients and flavor profile. After four days of working as a back waiter (which essentially requires running trays of food, ice, rice and dishes for eight hour straight) they said they wanted to train me as a server.

But by now I've finally gotten my letter of eligibility from the Florida Department of Education that says I can teach here. This letter allows me access to the job database and I call all eight schools with an opening. Seven have already hired someone, and one is doing their interviews THAT DAY (and I'm already driving to a MadScience training when I'm making the call). The secretary says if I fax my resume over, they might get me in. I call my mom at work, have her pull my resume from my email account (it had been attached to an email that I had sent), print it and fax it.

Three days later, I'm finally starting MadScience presenations and I get a call from the school: none of the applicants had impressed and they wanted to interview me, but it can only be THE NEXT DAY. Of course, I'm working a morning shift at P.F. Changs. I stay up until 4 AM putting together a video resume, work my shift, change in the car, drive across town, do the interview and they say they'll let me know.

In my experience, that is never good.

They called the next day: I got the job!

So I'm the newest 8th grade langauge arts teacher at this middle school, but I still have to jump through the hoops to get it, which includes a background check, drug testing and an 8 hour orientation for the county.

In the meantime, I have now been made the regular Friday night presenter for MadScience at a hotel, and P.F. Changs isn't able to get me trained as a server because they've packed my schedule with backwaiting shifts. They had jsut scheduled me to do my first training shifts this week, so weren't happy when I told them I got the teaching job and need to only work weekends.

So for the record: Mon-Fri: teaching; Friday evening and occasional weekday late-afternoons: MadScience; Saturday and Sunday: P.F. Changs.

Three jobs. Technically, this is not the busiest I've ever been in my life (in the Spring of 2004 I was teaching, working on my Masters, in a dance company, writing for two newspapers and directing a training video for Gear UP), and I'm sick of being poor.

Work! Work!

Peace Corps feels like such a long time ago.

America: Living Large

2007-01-30T12:23:00.000-08:00

I just got my W-2 from Peace Corps. Last year I made exactly $2,532.82, Doesn't seem like a lot, but I wasn't hurting in Ukraine: I had a roof over my head, food, a bit of travel and some spending money, all on less than $3,000 a year.

Makes a huge arguement for not living in America after retirement.

America: The Rest of the Trip (Pics)

2007-01-28T19:05:00.000-08:00

Everything we did after Disney probably merited all their own posts but, I don't know. I've been unmotivated to keep up with the blog. I started it because I was going into Peace Corps and wanted a record of that, and now that I'm back I've been unenthused. Still, peeps in Ukraine are asking for America pics, so here's a lot:

Marina and I rented a canoe and took it out on the Weikiva River. The thing about rivers in Florida: they got alligators!

Daniel at his wisest: eating a chicken lunch on a gator-infested river

Turtle. Possibly between the ages of 13-19. Possibly been in contact with radioactive substances. Possibly adept in the martial arts.

Marina trying to figure out how to go in a straight line.

Drunken idiots who overturned their canoe

***

This is how sparse this blog is: One whole crazy day at Universal Studios, but me only posting one pic

***

Since Marina came in the winter, she got to have a Floridian tradition: picking oranges. And by tradition, I mean tricking foreigners into slave labor because it's only fun for about ten minutes and there's thorns involved.

Marina with her basketful

We hit the road and went down to Boyton Beach (a little north of Miami) and hung out with my sister. My niece was obsessed with Marina. Seriously. If Marina tried to give Isabell back to my sister, she'd start crying.

Boyton Beach. Marina became addicted to beaches. So much so, I thought I was going to put her into rehab. "What do you want to do today?" "Go to the beach!" Repeat every morning. In addition to Boyton Beach we went to South Beach, Daytona Beach, a beach in Key Largo and snorkling in Weikiva springs. Since the water temp was too cold for me, I just read while Marina swam, often the only one in the water because no one else could stand the cold but her.

***

Sunrise in Key Largo. For those unaware, the Florida Keys are a string of islands south of Florida. We camped out in Key Largo (Marina unhappy because I didn't adequately explain that I don't have a tent and perfer to sleep under the stars. She opted to sleep in the car.) and got up the next morning because she wanted to see the sunrise over the ocean.

***

We got on a boat and went snorkling in John Pennecamp State Park in Key Largo, which protects a section of the only natural coral reef in North America. It was actually some of the best snorkling I've done in Florida. I had been unimpressed with Key Biscayne's park (which protects another section of the reef) when I snorkled it last year, so didn't buy a disposable underwater camera. Big mistake: crystal clear water, an abundance of coral and fish, a Spanish cannon from the 1700s, broken lobster traps blown in by Hurricane Wilma, Florida lobsters, barricuda, hundreds of live conchs and a nine foot nurse shark. It was later explained that all the polluted run-off from Miami kills the coral and wildlife in Biscayne, but Key Largo is far enough south to escape it.

The lines left by the mask kinda look like wrinkles, so this may be what I look like in ten years!

***

That's it for now! We spent her last day here at Islands of Adventure, but I'll go ahead and do one whole blog for that next time. Peace!

America: Walt Disney World (Pics)

2007-01-15T19:10:00.000-08:00

Firstly, Marina have been doing too much for me to have time to really post anything, but we got lots of cool photos coming which should make you want to go to Florida. Tomorrow, we're heading down to Miami and then the Florida Keys.

Secondly, A couple weeks ago I sent out the first wave of letters to book agents hoping to get one interested in a book I want to write about Ukraine. That wave only wanted a one page letter about the book. Others wanted a full proposal, so I was leaving those until after Marina left and I could work on it. Well, the "6-8 weeks" response time advertised by most agents turned out to be much faster than that. Of the 17 letters I sent out, I had 7 say they were not interested and 3 say that they were. Two of the three wanted a proposal that I currently didn't have. One wanted just the first three chapters, which I did. I spent the past two nights rewriting and rewriting those chapters late at night while Marina and my family slept and sent those chapters to the agent today. I have dozens and dozens more agents to sent proposals to and more letters to hear back on, but I'm still nervous/excited about my first sending out of an actual part of the book. We'll see.

And thirdly, photos of Disney:

My aunt got us free tickets good for one day and we had a lot to see: Disney has four major parks and a number of smaller ones and put together is bigger than Manhattan. We started at "Animal Kingdom", Disney's massive zoo. Above is the area made up to look like Africa

Some of the residents

One of my distant relatives

The next stop was "MGM", which has a number of rides based on television and movies. Here, Marina is standing in front of the Tower of Terror, based on the Twilight Zone. The main part is being in an elevator that shoots you up and down four times, once dropping you so fast you actually become weightless

At "Star Tours", a ride based on Star Wars. I'm sad to say that the walker shot the man and his kid

Marina taking a speeder bike ride

Me, lost in New York. Oh, wait, that's just a painting behind me

The famous ball of "EPCOT Center", a theme park about technology.
Its coolest attraction was "Mission to Mars" in which you sit in a moving centrifuge and "control" a ship that takes off from Earth and later lands on Mars, but not before serious G-forces, navigating an asteroid belt and having a crash landing. The worst attraction was "Honey I Shrunk the Audience", a decently-cool 3D movie preceeded by a pre-show that was, in fact, a 12 minute commercial for Kodak. And a bad one at that.

Lastly, the Magic Kingdom, where Disney World Started.

What Disney would be complete without a ride on "Pirates of the Carribean?"

The coolest part was being there with Marina. I grew up with this stuff and was introduced to the technology one step at a time. Marina, on the other hand, had never been on a roller coaster or a simulator, to a 3D movie or a ride with animatronics. It was all new and cool to her and made me remember how each thing was when I first encountered it as a kid.

America: Salsa and Water (Pics)

2007-01-08T15:59:00.000-08:00

My good friend Marina, who helped run the climbing camp and trained at the climbing wall, has been living and studying in upstate New York for the past six months on a university exchange program. Since she had two weeks left on her winter vacation, she decided to spend them with me. Possibly because she hasn't seen me for a while, possibly because she knew it wouldn't be boring, but probably because she she knew she'd be warm.

She had no sooner gotten off the plane than we plied her full of hamburgers and mac and cheese (you know, a good ol' fashioned American cookout) and then took her to a Latin club, along with my friend Brett.

Brett and Marina dancing

Neither Brett nor Marina had been to a Latin club, but I showed them the basic steps and they got them pretty fast. The club was called "Club Mambo", where everything is in Spanish and half the staff doesn't speak English anyway. I like that, though, because I need the practice. Since Jan 1, my mom and I have only speaking Spanish to each other and it's slow in coming back. Marina and I are mostly speaking in Russian because I don't want to loose it and I have to speak English with my mom's fiance, so the first dinner with Marina here was, um, interesting. And gave me a headache. But at least I can brag about having a dinner in three languages. Actually, my friend Diana had a rather brilliant idea to not loose my Russian at the expense of my Spanish (the opposite is what happened to me in Ukraine) and sent me a book for studying Spanish that's in Russian. This is why I love her.

Anyway, Club Mambo has two dance floors, both filled with people whirling and turning to Salsa, Meringue, Barchata and Mambo. It was heaven.

Mostly I left Brett and Marina to dance with each other since they were similar levels. The nice thing about a Latin club is that you always have ladies lining the floor waiting for someone to ask them to dance. And they've been doing it all their lives, which makes for a lot of fast, sweaty, hip-swivling, swirling fun.

The 1 AM booty-shaking contest

***

Marina's second day in town was spent rock climbing (of course) and we got yelled at because we were climbing in the lead climbing section and neither of us had been certified by the gym. This was slightly annoying: we've lead climbed a lot harder in tougher situations: wet rock, crumbling rock, extreme cold and they didn't want us to lead climb until we'd passed their course, which cost $25, which wasn't being offered that day anyway. Grr.

***

Today we went for more natural beauty and went up to Rock Springs, a state park just north of Orlando. It's got a spring that pumps up freshwater so fast it creates a strong current you can tube down. It was $1 to get in, $5 to rent the inner tubes and there we were: the only people getting jetted down this crystal clear river in this beautiful sub-tropical jungle.

No, this is not a postcard. That's Marina on the river

From start to finish, it takes about 20 minutes to float down the river and then there's a wooden boardwalk to walk back to the start. We did it twice, once lesiurely and once while in a sort-of-race that mostly involved trying to overturn the other person's tube. Marina did it a third time while I went to get dried off and warm again. I was fine the first time, but mid-way into the second, as the sun was beginning to set, the temperature dipped into the low 70s and with the water, my teeth were chattering. It took no time at all for my body to go right back to hating the cold.

Anyway, pictures are better than words, so here you go:

America: Two Jerks (Pics)

2007-01-01T18:17:00.000-08:00

So I've always wanted to be an extra on a movie set (well, actually, an extra on many movie sets), so when I saw on Craig's List (http://www.craigslist.com) that an independent movie needed extras in Orlando, I contacted them. They called me back, gave me directions and this afternoon I was standing on the set for "Two Jerks", a comedy about two guys working in a porn store.

The set of "Two Jerks"

On the left, director Will Cobble monitoring the, um, monitor

The script was fairly derivative of "Clerks", but that's admitted to by the writer/director, Will Cobble, who's even met and talked about the movie with Kevin Smith. Despite that, I was laughing while reading it, so maybe it'll be a success (Will said that Warner Bros and Roadshow Pictures had expressed interest in distributing).

Shooting the movie

When I told my mom that I would be working as an extra today, her first question was "are they paying you?" Actually, no, but I did get fed and was given an unlimited amount of Pepsi. Seriously, they just kept refilling the cooler. I also got a free DVD, but not porn. It was of Cobble's last movie.

The day got more interesting when I was in conversation with two other guys who were also extras and one of the crew asked if we were okay being in the same frame as a topless woman. None of us objected.

While on the set I had a conversation with a cast member named Tiffany, who was into paintball, rock climbing and motorcycles. This meant we had a lot to talk about, but we had to have a conversation in 30 takes. We'd get in about five sentences before we had to shut up for the next take, often getting cut off mid-sentence and picking it up later. It's an interesting way to talk, if only because you get time to think up witty responses. She also mentioned that she had really wanted to go bowling lately, but no one would go with her.

In any case, it turns out she was the girl who was going to be topless.

My role: browse porn. Now, this is not easy and requires years worth of experience. I was able to channel all those late nights surfing the web, though, into a Shakepearean performance of angst and glory that would have drawn tears had anyone been paying attention to what I was doing. I browsed porn that well.

While giving me direction about browsing porn, Cobble said "and you've already picked one" and handed me the porn masterpiece, "Black Velvet", which I then had to carry around for the next half hour

I was in the background of a couple scenes but have no idea what the framing was or if I was anything other than a blur in a blue shirt. Guess we'll find out when the movie comes out.

Will Cobble giving direction to Tiffany (who was having trouble with the whole "no bra" thing: she couldn't wear one since it would leave skin marks that would show in the topless scene.) and another extra named John

Preparing a shot. Note the Pepsi and the Penthouses.

"Britany", the film's mascot

I was also taking a lot of pictures of the set and Tiffany asked if I could take some of her in action. Including your topless scene? Yes, including the topless scene.

The photos of Tiffany didn't come out to well because I (obviously) couldn't use a flash and had to stand way back, but there you go

Unlimited Pepsi and photographing a topless girl? I'm sorry, did I need to get paid?

Tiffany and I are going bowling on Friday.

America: Only the Interesting

2006-12-29T22:01:00.000-08:00

Since I mostly write for an American audience, it was easy to blog while in Ukraine: anything that was unique or interesting for me was likely to be unique or interesting for them.

Since I've gotten home, though, I've become the quintesential American and feel I have nothing much to write about. The job hunt has not been going too well. I've got some apps out and may have landed a writing gig, but things are taking their sweet time in that department. I've got some ideas on the burner but I'll talk about them only if they start to boil. Mostly, though, I sit around and watch DVDs and read. Seriously, I barely leave the house. It's is a complete 180 from the life I was living in Ukraine and in Ukraine I used to think how sad it was that most of America sits around mindlessly entertaining themselves. Ah, sweet irony.

In the meantime, though, I'll condense the past two weeks down into the most interesting tidbits:

1) Drama between my sister and her baby daddy meant she came back to live at home. This meant that, for the first time in a decade, my immediete family is now all living under one roof. It's been chaotic, but also really nice. On several occasions all of us have ended up lying on my mom's bed in the evening, forming a sort of circle with our bodies with Isabell running around in the middle and trying to surprise us with flying tackles. We sing children's songs to her and she does the movements to "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and falls down on cue to "Ring Around the Rosie" and it's just the way things should be.

2) Christmas. Christmas has been very noisy this year because Isabell is an 18 month-old, and she's an 18 month-old that's not happy unless an Elmo DVD is playing all day every day (and will begin yelling "Elmo! Elmo!" as soon as the credits roll, which is her uncle's cue to restart it). In addition to the constant singing of said furry red muppet, she loves, loves, LOVES these little Christmas dolls that, like many of her dolls, will play a song whenever you squeeze its right hand. Her favorite game is to overlay the Elmo singing with the singing of three to four of these dolls at the same time. Other than my inability to concentrate on anything when this is going on and my occasional desire to bury these dolls in the backyard, it led to one funny incident: Isabell opened one of her Christmas gifts from me, which was a handmade doll from Ukraine. Not handmade as in really valuable, handmade as in this nice, soft little doll meant for babies to play with. The problem was as soon as she opened it, she started squeezing its right hand. When she realized it wasn't going to play any music, she immedietely lost interest. My present from my mother was a remote controlled car. I didn't realize how perfect a gift this was for me until I got it. I now chase Isabell around the house with it and get yelled at a lot.

3) I have no plans for New Years because after attending only one meeting of the group of Russian speakers I was supposed to spend New Year's Eve with, I was kicked out. Specifically, I was kicked out because I said some things I shouldn't have in a blog about the meeting. On the whole the blog was positive, but I gave some negative observations of some of the members (actually, it was just a blow-by-blow account about two of the older guys who were not-so-subtly trying to chat up the women, including a married woman and a 17 year-old). The group organizer read it and emailed me to tell me I had no right to judge people I just met (this is true) and was no longer in the group. This bummed me out because I really liked the people I met, just didn't like the two older guys. And now I have nothing to do on New Year's.

America: Birthday Pig Roast (Pics)

2006-12-21T19:40:00.000-08:00

So this was most of my birthday: a Cuban pig roast. Ironically, there weren't many Cubans at it. It was hosted by Bret, a friend of my mother's who learned the art from her and my grandfather. They had planned the roast thinking I would be in Ukraine on my birthday, which had been the original intention. But here I was back, and it's not like the roast could have been cancelled because about 30 of Bret's friends had been invited. My sister and Isabell couldn't come because of problems between her and Bret and there it was: it was my birthday and I was going to a party where I knew almost no one and my sister and Isabell couldn't even be there.

As things go it wasn't bad, I was just in a funk about everything, this in-between transition state where I am back home and miss Ukraine and my friends and certainly the fun I'd be having if I was there, but I didn't really want to go back and if I was able to teleport there I still probably wouldn't want to be there, I wanted to be here, with my family. It was just, well, strange.

In the end, I asked myself what I'd rather be doing and the answer quite quickly came back: climbing. So Jerry and I left, got my gear and went to the gym. I got to break in my birthday present to myself, my new rope, and led four new routes. After that, I was still in a mood, so I just climbed one route over and over until I got an adrenaline high and felt a whole lot better in the world. In Ukraine, at least, it would be to cold to climb...

Pig, Cuban style, roasted on a barbeque built of cinder blocks. When I was a kid, I'd help my Uncle Rene hang up the freshly slaughtered pig on the side of the house and spray it out with a hose before it was marinated and put over the coals.

Jerry, my grandfather and my mom

My grandparents, cutting apart the pig

Roast pork, black beans and rice and fried plantains...you can't get this in Ukraine

Splitting open the pig's head to get to the brain.

At pig roasts in Miami, my second-cousin Lazaro and his brothers would fight over who got to eat the brains. Since they weren't around, Bret got the honors

America: Land of Rules and Regs

2006-12-14T07:50:00.000-08:00

Mucho props to my boy Sean for coming up to this blog topic.

So on numerous occasions, I heard from Ukrainians (or read in their texts) that America is "a law-abiding nation". I laughed at first, thinking that we're a "law-bending nation", always trying to scam a deal, cheat on our taxes, etc. Aren't we a nature born of rebellion and have been breaking the rules ever since?

What I didn't realize until after a while of living in Ukraine is that yes, we have a lot of laws and tend to obey them whether we want to or not.

I got the hint that Ukrainians weren't such a law-abiding people (or didn't have the laws in the first place) when recreation included rapelling off condmended bridges in full view of police or climbing up the scaffolding of the largest bridge in Kyiv to see the view from the top. I always thought "won't we get in trouble?" when, actually, no, we wouldn't. I got the hint when we were allowed to climb all over centuries old castles or when Polissya thought it was ridiculous that I wanted to get parental permission forms for the climbing wall and the climbing camp. In Ukraine, your personal saftey is your own and in that way, they have more freedom than the land of the free. Actually, the length America goes to protect its own citizens (or, more accurately, protect itself from litigation) makes Ukrainians laugh. Mostly they don't know about it, because there's no plastering of warning signs and detailed instructions (a Ukrainian warning sign for an open manhole cover is to put some tree branches sticking up out of it so that you see it), but a minor example that drew chuckles was the big "WARNING" label on my American-made climbing harness that shows if you don't double back the strap. "Only in America," said one of my Ukrainian climbing parnters.

The most I ever saw the cops get involved in the lives of the citizens (other than trying to extract bribes) was during Eurovision. I saw a drunk guy hanging off of a bridge over the water eighty feet below him, a sure death if he fell. The cops went out after him, pulled him back, yelled at him and let him go.

But I didn't realize (or rather, had forgotten) how involved the law was in life in America. I got my car back from my sister and the first time I parked it in front of the house (on the grass, off the street), my mom told me I had to repark it so it faced in the direction of traffic. Why? No one knows. Maybe it makes things look prettier. But it's a regulation my sister got a ticket once for not doing, so I went and reparked the car. In Ukraine I could have parked the thing on a sidewalk (which is only slightly more frequent than driving on the sidewalk, which I've seen happen dozens of times) and no one would have cared.

I am currently helping my step-father tear down a small garage that he built on the side of the side of the house at the expense of serveral thousand dollars. Than the county told him that it was against regulations and needed to come down. It wasn't breaking any saftey rules, it was just against housing regulations about the way the houses should look. If he had put a tarp over the top of it instead of a roof (white trash all the way!) it would have been within regs because it wouldn't have been "permanant." But because he put some time and effort into doing it right, it needs to come down. And then to rub salt in the wound, he had to go pay for a demolition permit in order to have the time to take it down, or else they would have started fining him thousands of dollars a day. As soon as I was told this I thought "this would never happen in Ukraine." You could build a banya extention out on your balcony supported by flattened soda cans and stale string cheese and at most the cops would ask to use it.

In Zhytomyr, you could walk down the street with an open beer bottle, hike down your pants and begin pissing against a building while throwing said beer bottle into the street in full view of everyone and while you might get some dirty looks for not pissing in an alley like everyone else, no one, not even the cops, would bother you. Trust me: I've seen it more than once. And maybe that's why Ukraine doesn't look um, as "nice" as America, but believe it or not it's the natural extension of copious amounts of personal freedom.

I was driving yesterday and wanted to make a phone call on my new cell phone but couldn't remember if that was against the law or not. I remember there being a ruckus in the media about it, but didn't know if I'd get pulled over for doing it. It's all put me in a slight state of paranoia every time I leave the house, trying to remember the minutae of the legal realm because I have a hazy memory that there are a lot of laws but I don't remember what they all are. Living in a permanent state of paranoia about getting in trouble with the government? Gee, that reminds me of something...don't they have a word for that...wasn't there another government that was like that...well, I better not think about it because the thought police might give me a fine...

America: Why I Will Not Watch Television Ever Again

2006-12-10T12:14:00.000-08:00

For the past decade or so, I have not watched television. I watched a lot all through high school, but at college lived in a dorm without cable and found I didn't miss it all that much. Although a huge fan of movies and any television show created by HBO, these were viewed in a series of Blockbuster rentals that spoiled me and lead me to loathe any commercial break whenever I sat down to watch television at other people's houses. Although those DVDs and videos were watched on a television set, I didn't even have that in Ukraine, instead watching bootlegs on my laptop.

One of my favorite moments in my entire life occured while I was teaching one of my eighth grade classes in Oklahoma City. My kids knew I'd traveled a lot and done many things: they got stories and slide shows and videos, all part of my not-so-hidden effort to make them want to experience as much of the world as possible. I usually got the question: "Mr. Reynolds, where do you get time to do all this?" and my answer was: "I make the time because it's important to me" but that was never completely honest: I never conciously made time; it just always seemed to be there. If I was ever short a few hours, I just slept less.

But here was the moment: I mentioned (in response to a question about a show) that I don't watch TV. Silence descended. Then one of my kids, a screwed up expression on his face, slowly said "imagine all the time you must have." That's when I made the connection that, yeah, I probably have a lot more hours in the day simply because I don't regularly watch TV and that leads me to do a lot of other things. But that moment of precious realization on his part has stuck with me since. So since then my answer to "where do you get the time?" has been "I don't watch TV."

But I do have more free time now, so when I got back to America and my mother's monstrous television set, I turned it on. The first thing that came on was Dr. Phil. I have heard of him the way I have heard of many cultural icons: reading about them. I have read quite a bit about Survivor and American Idol and dozens of other shows even though I have never seen them. Other shows, like Lost and Entourage, I read about and then zealously watched on pirated or purchased media. I like that I don't get sold to when I am entertained.

So I knew who Dr. Phil was, but I was not prepared for what I saw. He was interviewing three people: a man, his wife and the wife's mother. At interest was a lie detector test that the man had just taken about whether he had molested his own daughter. Dr. Phil slowly read each question: "have you at any time put your penis into ...'s vagina?" To every question the man answered "no" and to every question Dr. Phil said "the test says you are deceptive." At which point I wanted to throw up. The mother was just shaking her head and saying vile things to the father, but was not attempting to claw his eyes out, which was the appropriate response, although the far more appropriate response would have been this questioning occuring in a police department because WHO THE FUCK GOES ON NATIONAL TELEVISION IF THEY SUSPECT THEIR DAUGHTER HAS BEEN MOLESTED?

So I was caught on all ends: the revolting disgust at the father, the revolting disgust at the mother for coming on the show, the revolting disgust at Dr. Phil for having the show (furthered by the fact that he probably thought he was doing a civil service) and more and more disgust at the audience, the advertisers and anyone who kept watching for reasons that they probably didn't understand but were all subconciously purient.

I turned it off in mid-sentence and have not turned it on since, nor plan to. There is nothing on television that I want to see. If it is worth seeing, it will be vetted by the public in general, I will hear about it and then I will watch it on DVD or will download it and rationalize that at some point I'll buy the whole season on DVD. There isn't a single piece of information or show that I can't get online and at least I will never have to be sickened in 17 different ways and worry about the dowfall of society all in the space of a second ever again.

You don't need the purient. It's healthier to just watch porn.

America: Family (Pics)

2006-12-09T16:24:00.000-08:00

I no longer worry about why I came back. My sister and my niece came up from South Florida today. My niece, who I had been warned tends to hide from strangers (and sometimes throws things at them) ran right up to me coming in the door and gave me a hug. She hasn't seen me in a year. In fact, she was only eight months old when I last saw her. But she remembered me.

This afternoon we sat around, hanging out. My mom, my step-father, my sister, my niece and me. We haven't been together for a year, and even last year it didn't feel like this.

When I've come home before, I didn't spend time with my family, I spent hyper-time, time lived intensely because all involved knew it was brief (save for my niece, whose mental cognition didn't go past eating, pooping and configuring her face into an infinite aray of endearingly cute expressions). Even sitting around and watching a movie was a cost/benefit analysis of two hours spent out of a few hundred available before I left yet again.

But sitting around today was different, relaxed, all together and as it should be. I can't remember when it last felt that way and in some ways it never had: my niece and step-father are recent additions to the configuration. So this is what I came back for: a warm afternoon of all of us watching my niece run around and just being with each other without us feeling like "time's-short-we-need-to-be-with-each-other!"

Family. It's why this is home and why I am here. Screw the "somebody/anybody" comment of my last blog. I am home.

P.S. I have the cutest niece in the world.

Me and my niece

My step father and my niece playing with my guitar