Algos fotos

Quick hits:

--First the old weird man that lives here just told me, "I'm going to watch my fights on the TV at 10 and if you want to watch something else I'll arm wrestle you."

--I knew there had to be some crazy shit about the kid living here who studied three years at Oxford and a year at Princeton, turns out he came down here to study Spanish five weeks ago and he already speaks it as well, if not better than I do. I've been studying Spanish for nine years and it only took him five weeks to get where I'm at.

--I forgot to take a picture but the level of advertising for Wall E is mind blowing. I understand major corporations tapping into the South American market, but the level of advertising for a movie that will be in theaters for a couple of months is crazy.

I want to meet the person behind Disney/Pixar's marketing team who said, "Hey how about we put a picture of Wall E on every subway ticket in Buenos Aires." I need to start thinking this hard.

--If you're ever in Buenos Aires, don't eat the pizza at the shop that's about 4 blocks southeast (I think, I'm still on the lookout for north) of my apartment. It ruined half my day.

And now a ton of photos:

First a shot-out to my boys back in the trap, I ain't forgot bout y'all (c) T.I.
This is a terrible picture of I took of Puente de Mujer. It was great because after my amazing day of walking the river I went out the next day to try and capture some of it with my camera, except the weather was such shit that it ruined most of the pics.
This is Rucker Park-esque football field I wrote about other day
This is just a decent action shot
I wish I took this dope HDR photo, but I had to rerun it just to show you sick pirate ship I went on the other day. It's not really a pirate ship as it's called the Fragata A.R.A. Presidente Sarmiento and it's now a permanent museum. The great thing is that it's free to tour (at least I'm 95% sure it is as I just walked on) and you can explore every part of the ship. It was really weird as there were no tour guides or officials, just people wandering through every cavity of the ship. I took a ton of pics, but most of them suck.
Yes I went on a historic Argentine war vessel and the only two pictures that I'm going to run is this one of a stuffed dead dog, which if my understanding is right died in 1935...
and this picture of a T.G.I. Fridays which was on the land in front of the ship. I only took this photo in hope that one day I can meet someone who will say, "My dream photo is a kinda blurry photo of a mediocre American restaurant franchise that I shot off a historic Argentine ship." Then I can smirk at them and say I already did that, then back peddle away like Gilbert Arenas.
Finally here's a peak at my new room
...And here's the other half of my room.

Re-Finally, here's a hilarious YouTube video I stole off Jeff Staple's blog. I have seen shit like this before and I can't imagine how much time and effort someone wastes to make these weird music videos, but this one may have been worth the hours of editing Sesame Street clips.

Insanity

I've been looking forward to this post for a while, my first post from my new place. Before I blindside you with the sheer gangstaness of my new place I'll take you through the struggle of finding a place in Buenos Aires.

Day 1 in Buenos Aires: We go to the UCA (my new school) study abroad office and the main lady greets us with a Spanish version of "Why the fuck are you here so early, I really have nothing to offer you." She hands us a stack of papers with places to live.

Night 1: Send out a million e-mails to any host family that looks acceptable from their two-to-three line housing description.

Day 2: Start cold-calling families that we are really interested in. This is tough because as Beanie Sigel once said, "85 percent communication non-verbal" (points to whoever can name the song) and talking to someone who only speaks Argentine Spanish on the phone wasn't the easiest thing ever.

Eventually the two girls I was traveling with and myself visited a couple of places. Much more were already occupied. It was definitely a stressful couple of days as we constantly e-mailed, called and visited anybody we could. Many of the places were too expensive, too small or just too shitty, or as my Argentine brethren would say they were "fuck places."

Seriously one place we looked at appeared to be a hallway converted into a room. Without exagerating it was a tiny bed (smaller than any I had ever seen before, possible a matress for a cradle) and a small desk with maybe six inches between the two. Even worse than the small quarters was the gross new condiminiums they were constructing next to the building. I'll be damned if I have to constantly be reminded of shit gentrification.

One of the descriptions for a habitacion said la duena (the owner) was something, something else and gives massages. She never responded to my e-mail, which is probably for the better as it would have been hard to look at myself in the mirror after getting a happy ending from a 55-year-old Argentine every day. Maybe I read between the lines too much.

Eventually after having a few options and scenarios that are way too complicated to ever repeat I ended up with a fairly trill casa.

It's not ideal because I planned on living with a family that would cook for me every night, but the following makes up for it.

My own large room, a full-size bed, two windows with ridiculous views, a nice closet, desk, bookcase, a washing machine, large patio on the third floor which overlooks a beautiful city, access to two full bathrooms, a family room with cable tv, access to a full kitchen and maid service twice a week.

All for $314 USD a month. Game over.

The only downside, which isn't really even a downside because I get to now see more of the city is that it's about a 40 minute bus ride to campus. This will probably suck after a few months, in which point I can easily fix said problem by not going to said school (kidding mom).

Upside #284 of my place is that it's in Palermo one of the more desirable barrios in Buenos Aires as it's a cleaner, safer part of town. It's also full of 8 million trendy hipster stores and restaurants. Palermo itself if divided into sub-barrios (which probably isn't a word) there is Old Palermo, Palermo SoHo, a bunch of other Palermos and Palermo Hollywood, which is my now my block (Sway get at me).

Also I was just starting to get used to my hostel and meeting new people every day, so this is a happy medium as I'm living in a three-bedroom house that the owners rent out to seven people, there's a ton of rooms in the house. Everyone is real nice and today I met two sweet Columbian girls and some bloak from England who studied at Oxford and Princeton.

It will be pretty dope as I'll have new roommates every month or so.

One weird thing is that there is a small door (it only comes up to my chest) that leads to a secret room, the duena told me that some old man lives there. I basically understood it as the beast from the Sandlot lives there and if your ball rolls under the door you can forget about it.

I actually met the guy today though and he's just a weird old white man who once lived in Gilbert, Arizona. He's 78 and came to Buenos Aires for four weeks to try to learn Spanish, which I highly respect, since he didn't know any Spanish before he came here.

He obviously can't speak Spanish for shit and because he's hard of hearing it's bizarre to watch him shout at every person who talks to him in Spanish with loud English.

Also today I walked a block from my place to a local shop called "Pizzaria Barcelona" and I had a huge steak with great seasoning, veggies and potatos for $5 USD.

It's also nice because now I'm on my own away from the two UA girls I came with. One of them was alright/half-way cool, the other was a *****, but we all got along.

For the record the ***** was Skyping her parents every day and her mom wrote her an e-mail from her dog. Then in a moment in which I almost lost my fucking mind, the ***** talked to her dog on Skype and said some of the gayest things I have ever heard a human spew.

Keep in mind that the previous night I was watching some crazy Argentine "So you think you can dance" like show, except it was basically a fuckin strip club on TV as it was full of near naked woman dancing with a pole. I was watching it with a Brazillian guy and I commented how awesome this show as it was better than most soft-core porn I'm accustomed to watching on my Spanish stations at home.

He responded, "No me gustan, soy gay. Pero hay hombres en esta programa que me gusta." (I'm not sure how white my audience is so translation: "I don't like them, I'm gay. But there are men in this show that I like."

This was still not as gay as the dog Skyping.

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Photos (if you click on them, you can see a bigger version):

The inside of my hostel

The view from outside my hostel
A shot inside my hostel
A blogged here some times, and oddly enough this is a picture of Dan before I even met him
I blogged here other times

In this photo I'm not really blogging, just acting like I'm blogging for the sake of the photoThis is the name of my hostel, which I secretly called the "Madhouse off McDowell"
This is the view from my new place
This is the view from the back window of my new room. One day I hope to ride an ATV across all the roofs like DMX in the cinematic masterpiece "Cradle 2 the Grave."

The blog step back 3

Unprecedented. Three blogs in one day. They said it couldn't be done. I just have too much shit to write about.

--I wanted to write about this days ago after it happened, but I had my first jesus-fucking-christ-i'm-living-here-for-the-next-five-months-this-is-fucking-unreal moment of the trip while walking along "los diques" (the dikes that divide a river) in the Puerto Madero district of the city.

Everything was just fucking amazing, and I only say "fucking amazing" because I'm just a small-time writer for Tucson's fourth biggest Nic Wise tribute blog and I don't have the literary skills to describe all the sights I saw on my walk.

Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera, so I'm going to rely on my half-ass writing skills to discuss the highlights of the trip.

1. Puente de Mujer (pictured above): In a shocking, unforseen upset Puente de Mujer became Justin Adler's favorite bridge of all time defeating the reigning champion Bay Bridge. I first saw this bridge from a couple blocks away and thought it was a giant harp. Then when I saw it up close I was in awe. Then when I figured out how it worked I lost my fucking mind. I don't know anyone who has seen it open, but I plan on sitting next to it for as long as it takes to see the huge bridge turn 90 degrees. Hell I might buy a ship, just to make it open.

2. Kids play soccer every where. I feel like a complete douche using soccer so from now on I'm using football. If you are in a crowded area you will see someone playing football every block. If you are in a less crowded area, you will still see football every two blocks.

While walking along the river walk a football team came out of no where and just started doing freestyle tricks such as sick ball handling moves and passing under random objects.

Everyone wears football jerseys. Unlike the States where wearing jerseys in public became uncool after Hov realized he was 30 plus, people of all ages wear kits all the time.

I also saw two kids playing football in the street and not even giving a fuck about the cars driving by as they literally would jump right in front of them.

The kids are cool as their dad works the Ugi's Pizza right next to my hostel. They started talking to me about Maradona, which was great because I was going on my 72nd hour in Argentina without an unsolicited conversation about Maradona. The kids, no more than 12 years old, said something about marijuana, then I responded that Maradona took a ton of drugs.

Then the little chico put his finger on his nose and started snorting air. I laughed and contemplated adopting him. To put this into American perspective, imagine talking to a little kid about Kobe Bryant and the first thing he does is bend over the nearest white woman.

3. Back to my list... I saw the coolest jacket I have ever seen in my life. All red, white colar, white trim on the sleeves, a white Nike Swoosh on the right and a thick-stiched rose on the left. Nothing else. I have no clue what the hell it represented or where I could get it, but it's now my dream jacket. No, I'm not sure why I felt the need to blog this.

4. There's a lot of shit I'm forgetting.

5. The greatest moment where it all came together as I figured out life and almost figured out the Dharma Initiative in the process came as I walked by one of the 800 swank, modern restuarants by the river. They were playing he Gorrillaz instrumental, that Lupe ripped in "A bathing harry" off his mixtape "A Rhyming Ape." You'd have to be Justin Adler in Buenos Aires to understand, but it was one of the defining moments of my life.

6. Oh yeah, all this shit is just in front of my campus.

----Other random shit

--There were some nice Brittish girls staying in my hostel room one night. While forcing the awkward football small talk that every American with the slightest interest in sports brings up with anybody from England, one girl said, "Yeah I have the Arsenal crest on my rock bag."

Within 2 seconds I had many questions:
----How'd you get a bag of rocks from Manchester to Buenos Aires?
----Why is a young girl smuggling crack across the Atlantic?
----How the fuck did you get an Arsenal-themed dime bag?
----Shit, can I get down on some?

Tragically, she was just referring to her backpack.

--I really wanna see Ari Shiffrin skate this city, so I'm starting a foundation right now that is basically raise money to buy the man a plane ticket. We need about $1,500, so start Paypal-ing money to elkgrove44@aol.com asap. Thanks. Your 990-EZ will be e-mailed to you soon after your donation.

--I forgot to put this in my magical walking list of earlier, but I stumbled across a huge soccer field in the middle of Puerto Madero. It was fenced in so it had the Rucker Park feel and both teams were wearing sick pro kits, one team was fully laced with light blue Barca kits.

It's now my new goal to find the Rucker Park of Buenos Aires.

--Speaking of streetball, this video of Kevin Durant dropping 60 in a Goodman League game is pretty sick. OK so I didn't watch the whole thing but Durant has a dirty step-back 3 from a couple feet in front of half court at he 5:30 mark. The Goodman League is the famous streetball tourney in the shittiest part of D.C. that got tons of national media attention when Gilbert Arenas started casually showing up completely unnanounced. He also drove up in his Maybach on some John Leguiziamo in Empire shit.

--Speaking of D.C. hoops, and this doesn't have to do with anything so be ready, but it's my favorite story that only I find funny. Once while creeping some hot girl I barely know on Facebook, I tagged Antonio Daniels in one of her photo albums that showed her at a Wiz game with Daniels warming up in the background. The combination of tagging a random NBA role player into a photo of a girl I had met once was just too much for me and I laughed for a solid five minutes after I did it. No that doesn't have shit to do with anything, but if Weezy can talk about the Gremlins...

--Props to my main man Gould for keeping me up on all D. Miles news. Mr. Kerr, please realize that Darius is the missing piece.

--At my hostel they played an accordian only version of Orgy's "Blue Monday."

--Special guest editor for Seth Janiga-related post: Seth Janiga. I regret the error of making the Tottenham Hotspur plural. I also regret not reading any of this shit over and posting it with 9 million typos and grammar errors.

--I learned today there's a Niketown in Buenos Aires I will hit up soon and hopefully find my dream jacket.

----Future WPM post you should greatly anticipate: My essay on how Juelz Santanas is as, if not more important than any other form of media that has impacted my life.

Also coming up soon, my obsession with Wall-E's marketing, my time on a pirate ship, some photos, random allusions to Beanie Sigel.

--I almost forgot but as I type my new Brazillian friend just came up to me and said "Fuck Man!" then ran away. Anybody who has talked to me for more than 3 seconds or read this blog understands my grand affinity for profanity. I can't tell you how much I enjoy hearing all these "foreigners" swear. I love how Brittish use "shit" as an adjective such as "this is a shit couch," but Argentines take it a step further.

I asked if I should go to some outdoor concert tonight, but the hostel employee told me "Don't go. Too much rain. It's fuck weather."

This other kid I hang out with says "fuck" before every word. "This is fuck beer. Why do you wear such fuck clothes? Fuck."

Also Argentines don't use "son of a bitch" or even it's literal translation "hijo de puta" they use "penoche de su madre" when something goes wrong. Look it up.

Matt Barnes

Even though the Suns are probably my fifth favorite team in the NBA, I'm fucking excited to have Matt Barnes on the team, provided they don't drug test in his physical.

Matt Barnes is one of my favorite players for several reasons: all his tattoos, his dunk on dirk, the time he crowd surfed after the upset of the Mavs and mainly because he is Matt Barnes.

Andy, Gould, Tarny, I'm upset with you all for not bringing to my attention the second this became public last night.

If we can now just trade Nash for Marbury I'll be a die-hard Suns fan.

In the social

I left my Arizona crew to hang out with a 31-year-old dot-com millionaire who retired at 30 to live in South America. I ended up getting tentatively engaged by the end of the night.

The night started out with mild ambitions, I had just bought Freakanomics from a local English bookstore and I decided I would just relax, read the book and get a good nights rest. I sat in the lounge talking with people who made me feel like a douchebag for buying a roundtrip plane ticket. Everyone in the room had been in South America for at least a year and had no scheduled date to ever return home.

I ended up talking to this guy named Dan because he was wearing a University of Texas sweatshirt and after five days of living with girls I needed to have an extended talk about Kevin Durant, D.J. Augustine and T.J. Ford.

After talking to the guy for an hour I learned he dropped out of college because he was offered a job during the dot-com boom. He then started his own company which grew to a 40-person operation that he always planned one day selling and moving to Costa Rica.

His former company was one of few in the nation that did some kind of advanced programing to make sure accountants weren't stealing pennies of giant transations, at least that's what he told me in short.

He sold the company right before the market crashed and then sold his mansion in Austin, Texas, which he said was only furnished with a futon in the master bedroom and a sick home theater in another room. He added that the only reason he ever bought a house was for the tax return.

He said he didn't have enough money to retire in the States, but he could comfortably live South America, even if it meant as an illegal immigrant in Buenos Aires who has to go to Uruguay every 180 days to have his visa renewed.

Basically he ran a successful company and just cashed out at the right time and had been living in South America for the last 15 months with all of his life's possessions in a backpack. One of the most inspirational people I have ever talked to.

I figured this was someone I needed to roll with for the night, so Dan, my weird Brazillian friend and I all went over to a corner store to buy the Argentine equivalent of 40s.

And for the record the corner store was playing K-Ci and JoJo's "All my life," (which oddly enough I tried to link to and YouTube dropped "This video is not available in your country").

We then bounced to another hostel that Dan said he had to leave because he knew if he stayed any longer he would have died. This is exactly what I was looking for.

I ended up meeting some crazy-ass people and then some chick from Australia.

When I'm sober I try to make conversation with foreigners without throwing everything I know about their country at them, however this was not the case at this point in the night as the conversation went:

"Hi, I'm Justin. Do you watch Flight of the Concords?" (Yes I know New Zealand and Australia are two seperate countries, but at this point it didn't matter)

Then she said perhaps the most beautiful words I have ever heard a female say: "I love that show! Do you have a Zune and can you send it to me?"

"Shut the fuck up," I responded because hundreds of Zune conversations with my friend Seppy have programed me to say "shut the fuck up" whenever anyone brings up a Zune and because I was in such shock. "I love you and you have no idea how great what you just said is."

We then talked about Summer Heights High for a while and after our conversation lead to a discussion about Luc Longley, I decided this was perhaps this was the one and I asked her to marry me.

She said yes.

I was at a dirty Argentine hostel/bar, surrounded by people who had been up for the past 72 hours and my new friend Dan. The setting could not have been better.

I now realize that I'm living in a bizarro world where nights of watching obscure Australian TV shows and owning a Zune, which is perhaps more bizarre than the former, are allowing me to meet girls.

If I can get 90s bullshit r&b videos to stream on my laptop I might move here.

Como se dice WL

Truthfully I haven’t done anything that incredibly amazing in Buenos Aires, but this might make my friends back home a little jealous; you can play Winning Eleven on the street.

Not only would this give everybody I hang out with a reason to go outside, but I believe it’s the first part of some bizarre Seth Janiga fantasy where he beats Spicker on a crowded public street in front of a gaggle of cute girls who are so impressed with Seth’s prowess they declare they want to fuck the shit out of him because they have never seen the Tottenham Hotspurs used so efficiently and effortlessly.

Then just as Seth is about to run off with said broads, Spicker argues the win was in PKs, brings up aggregate scoring and then steals Seth’s glory and WL-related orgy.

--Another tradition I'd like to see jump the pond - and by jump the pond I mean whatever body of water is between the top of Brazil and the bottom of the states - is the tarring and feathering of university graduates.

I sat with my American companeros and watched as an entire family poured a bag of flour over their now-graduated daughter’s head, then they poured confetti on her, before cracking a couple of eggs on her head. Then they all stood there for another 10 minutes and threw more shit at her. I have a picture of this somewhere that I’ll run later on.

--When I get to any city I like to find out which direction north is because I find this to be a pretty fundamental way of getting around town. Unfortunately most people in Buenos Aires don’t believe in this philosophy.

A waitress at a restaurant, who happened to be from Texas and speak English, told us she’d been working down here for since March. We asked her a million basic questions about the city and I asked which direction north is. She said she had no idea. I was fucking blown away as she’d been here for a couple of months and still had no clue where north was.

Then I asked an employee at my hostel and she also said did not know. She asked a man sitting at the bar in the hostel and he gave the famous Bugs Bunny “he went that-a-way” hand gesture implying north was in multiple directions. Maybe being so close to the South Pole has made the concept of north completely unfathomable. It’s now one of my goals while I’m here to find north and have a statue erected in my honor for the legendary explorer who found north.

--Speaking of statues, there’s a huge statue in the middle of the city that is covered in graffiti, and one of the taggers left his g-mail address below his work.

--I think this might be common in every other country other than America, but as we all sat and enjoyed some nice Italian food somebody came to the table and dropped off gifts. This would have been enjoyable if I was craving some gel pens and a mini flash light with my pizza, but I was not so we left the bum’s gifts for him to come back and pick up.

This ritual also repeated itself on the subway as a woman walked around and put a package of hair ties and barrettes on everybody’s lap, including myself and other men with little to no hair. I hope that some time during my five-month stay here somebody provides me with something I desperately need, such as an Oreo milkshake from Jack in the Box.

--I meant to write this early but I had my first interaction with the show House on my flight to Buenos Aires. I’d never seen the show before, but I’d heard good things so I gave it a chance knowing I had nothing else to do with a 10-hour flight.

In the first episode I watched Dr. House made this woman admit to her 12-year-old daughter that she is a huge slut who loves being fucked on her stomach, and then House made his staff give her medicine which made her eyes bleed. Then they drilled into her bones and smoke came out of her motherfucking bones. Then as she was about to die on Christmas day, House gave the woman some magical medicine that revealed that she had breast tissue below her knee cap, which was actually cancerous. Then House inserted a syringe into the said boob in knee, extracted a fluid, instructed the daughter to open her mouth, and then squirted the knee-titty-cancer fluid into the daughter’s mouth.

House then told the woman she’d need chemo and she was going to live before exiting the hospital as Christmas carols transitioned to the ending credits.

I know can say I love House.

--As I type this “Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas” by Frank Sinatra is playing. It’s July 18th for the record.

--At this point if you are not reading Will Leitch’s “God Save the Fan,” you are no longer my friend.

Things I miss about America:
---Honda Accords: You don’t realize how much enjoy them until you can’t see them on the road every two minutes.

---Stephon Marbury

Rebirth

Well Paul McPherson probably is not in Buenos Aires, but that will is where my search will take me for the next five months; and yes for those of you keeping track at home I am now using life and search for Paul McPherson interchangeably.

I don’t know how much I’ll blog of the trip because one of my goals is to wean myself off my blog addiction I have been feeding for the past three years. I’m now just going to jot down some of my notes on the day sans any semblance of transitions. Maybe one day I will try to write a WPM essay on my love for transitions and how I used to pour over my writing trying to make it flow as smooth as possible before I gave up on writing for the third time.

Just so I have it down in print I prophetically said that I would seriously quit journalism at least three more times before I finally do it. Right now I am still in the retirement phase that began in the summer of 2007 and I like to think that all the blogs is because they kinda pay and because as my friend Seppy once told me, “Where’s P-Mac is bigger than you now.”

--While taking a piss in Sky Harbor airport a man urinates beside me in an Arizona basketball No. 3 jersey. I die a little bit inside remembering that Brandon Jennings will never rock an Arizona uniform. Then I think that maybe he’s just a huge Will Bynum fan and I get sadder that I never got to see Will the Thrill throw it down in McKale. Then I go back to thinking about how awesome Brandon going to Europe is. Then I finish pissing.

--I normally don’t like talking to anybody on the plane, but I had to bother the person next to me twice. The first time was because I thought her shirt said “I heart DVD” then I bothered her again to ask her, “What do you call her (pointing at flight attendant)? A flight stewardess?”

“A flight attendant,” she responded. This was important as I needed to text my friend Beit Machine that our flight attendant had pretty eyes just like his sister and it was vital this was my final text message or form of communication in case the plane crashed.

I then decided that if the plane crashed I needed some better final words, so I texted my friend Tar, “This shfartz is reading an US Weekly in the BS first class with fucking sun glasses on.” Hopefully one my friends can offer a eulogy that explains that Justin wasn’t racist, he just loved the word “shfartz” and hated people who wear sun glasses indoors.

--I am 75 pages through Will Leitch’s “God Save the Fan” and it might be the best book I have ever read. Leitch is/was the founding editor of Deadspin and he now might be my favorite writer ever*. If you enjoy sports, mildly enjoy this blog, really enjoy any sports blog, have ever read Deadspin, like masturbatory jokes, want to truly appreciate Ron Mexico, enjoy brilliant writing; then you should go buy the book.

*besides Lang Whitaker