Why I love the bus

I mentioned earlier that I now take the city bus to school, but I didn't mention the life-changing experiences I normally encounter on the 50-minute bus ride to school.

The bus has became my new favorite place to read because I am free from all other distractions. There is no TV, no internet, nobody to talk to (nobody really wants to talk to anybody on their way to work, and if they try to talk with me, they quickly realize that it's too early in the morning for me to speak Spanish).

On Friday's bus ride I figured out all of life for the second or third time this trip. As I sat there reading Freakanomics, I realized that the general concept of economics is perhaps one of the few elements of society that I can't understand to save my life.

It takes me forever to figure out any basic economic principle and whenever I read any article deeply based in economic lingo it all goes over my head. I've had Argentina's 2001 economic collapse explained to me multiple times and I still don't get it.

I then started linking random events in life (like Freakanomics does for 300 pages) and concluded that the only reason I have this blog is because of my high school economics class. If it weren't for Mrs. Seep's AP economics class I wouldn't have been scared away from a business major and pursued journalism as a plan B before I even attempted plan A.

If it weren't for economics I would have gone the business school root and probably never have created this blog, which was created with the intentions to practice writing and of course find Paul McPherson.

This is not to say that I'm now set on being a writer or that I'm ruling out becoming an economist, it was just a weird correlation that popped into my head.

Then my mind jumped to the idea of actually going hard after P-Mac, finding him, learning his life and then writing an amazing book.

I know it wouldn't be hard to actually find P-Mac if I really tried, because at the end of the day he's just a basketball player, who really isn't even that famous. Plus I've already had a couple of people contact me with his where-abouts, like ChrisH who commented the other day that, "PMac was hanging out on the corner across from my apt this afternoon with shawn marion."

Granted the whole writing a book thing would require P-Mac to have an interesting enough story, me to have enough skills to make the book readable, and the whole find an agent/publisher dilemma. And it probably would take a ton of work on my end to write a book about P-Mac that would appeal to people outside of P-Mac's family and the Southside of Chicago.

Then I scratched the whole book idea and decided I should just get a real job, but somehow have a career that enables me to work for three years and then take every fourth year off to travel the world. I came upon this 3:1 ratio while realizing that one of the main components to Buenos Aires' greatness is the fact that everything is currently 1/3 the cost of it's equivalent in the United States. And Stephon Marbury and Brandon Jennings wear 3, so 3:1 just makes sense.

Therefore if I save my American money for three years and Obama gets shit straight I can ball real hard every fourth year off American soil, then only exist in American society 75 percent of my life.

I was quite content that the bus ride enabled me to have a new appreciation for Mrs. Seep, theorize writing a book, and come up with some retardedly idealistic career plan.

Then I got off the bus, remembered I was still in Buenos Aires, looked at the Thierry Henry advertisement that's right in front of my school and realized that life was pretty good. I'm not exactly sure how Thierry helped the situation, but he did.

I had figured everything out by 10 in the morning. There was nothing I couldn't do and I was set on changing the world. I was going to enroll in some incredible classes that would push me so I could learn everything I possible could about Argentine culture.

Then it came time to actually make my schedule for the upcoming semester.

I was assigned into a pre-intermediate Spanish class, which meets twice a week. This was mildly embarrassing because despite taking nine years of Spanish and living the past 18 years of my life in cities where Spanish is spoken by 50 percent of the population; somehow I failed the evaluation exam badly enough to the point where I was put into a pre-intermediate Spanish class that only 10 percent of the exchange students qualified for (the other 85 percent were in various levels of intermediate and 5 percent were more retarded than me).

This really didn't phase me though as I didn't come Buenos Aires to learn Spanish grammar.

The rest of my schedule goes as follows:

Monday: Arte Argentino y LatinoAmericano Cotemporaneo (3:00-6:00)
--This is a class that meets once a week, often times at a museum where we evaluate contemporary and modern art. Contemporary and modern art happens to be one of my favorite things in life.

Tuesday: No class

Wednesday: Pre-Intermediate Spanish (2:00-4:00)
Migraciones y minorias en Argentina (4:00-7:00)
--I might take this class, if I do it would be the only serious class I'm taking. Therefore I probably won't take it.

Thursday: Arte y nueve tecnologias en Argentina
--Same concept and teacher as Monday's class, except this class focuses only on art made with computers. Trill.

Friday: Pre-Intermediate Spanish (2:00-4:00)

and here is where shit gets crazy... Aves de Argentina y Sudamerica

That's right. Bird watching. It gets better. The class only meets a couple times each month and one of the times overlaps with my Pre-Intermediate Spanish, to which the birds professor said he would give me an excused absence for my Spanish class.

So basically, I'm taking two modern art classes, one Spanish class and a class my friend and I just call "Birds," which happens to provide an excuse to skip one of my only serious classes.

Provided I'm able to get UA credit for all this it will be the most epic achievement of my life.

However you could argue that none of this fits into my whole achieving everything, changing the world M.O. from two hours earlier.

Don't worry I got the rest of the afternoon to pursue the aspirations from my morning bus ride.

So where does the rest of the afternoon take me?

To a parking garage where I'm participating in business I probably be shouldn't be participating in with a silver-toothed crackhead named Juan.

Well, maybe Monday will be the day.

La semana pasada

--There's Manu Ginobli advertisements everywhere in the city, which I love because they depict Manu in odd situations (see more pics below) and because it's comforting to see the Nike Swoosh every three blocks.

This morning when I woke up the Argentina/Australia game was on and I got to see my new main boy in action. Watching Manu is like watching the out of place guy at the gym, there's nothing particularly smooth about his game and his bald spot makes him look 10 years older than he really is. Yet he still murders everyone.

I already hate Pablo Parigiani of the ARG national team because he committed the two dumbest fouls I have ever seen in my life as ARG was up 4 with less than 15 seconds in the game.





--The USA/Lithuania game followed. USA killed Lithuania, who should ditch their Nike sponsorship and go back to the tie-dye jerseys. And boom there goes the dynamite.

--Apparently in Colombia journalism is respected less than it is in America. I was told that in Colombia the only people who study journalism are Miss Colombia contestants and other retarded models.

--For those of you who were making bets back home. I lasted somewhere around 9 days before I started to really miss Portland. It hasn't been as bad as when I was in Tucson, but I've still done quite a bit of Portland proselytizing. I'm trying to convince some of the great people I'm meeting here to move with me to Portland.

--Although I hated him at first, Ed has became one of my favorite people in the house just because half of the shit he says is priceless.
Like Monday's conversation:
Me: "How was your day Ed?"
Ed: "Oh. (long pause) Just fucking terrible."

Ed is really into boxing even though he hates damn near all of the athletes involved in the sport. He once eloquently described Floyd Mayweather as "just another n***** with money" and he believes that Ali would not have Alzheimer's if he were white.

Ed wasn't happy when I told him I really don't have any religion. I decided it was best to stop there and not tell him that if I had to pick a religion it would revolve around Money Mayweather.

--The stripper show on network TV here continues to amaze me. The other night it featured this huge fat guy that may have been Luciano Pavorotti (who apparently faked his death in '07 to move to Argentina) rubbing this stunningly hot girl's bare ass. Then it had another couple practically have sex on the stage.

Then a stripper climbed to the top of the tallest stripper pole I have ever seen and hung upside down by her legs. I'm just glad that no matter what language you speak or what color your skin is, stripper safety is always, always least of your concerns.

--Normally before I go out for the night I have a quick bowl of Frosted Flakes because it's quick, mildly filling, and I figure that if I'm going to go out and blow money on drinks I should at least not eat all of my food in the same night; note: this logic does not apply upon returning home.

However now that I'm living in a land where steak is as cheap as cereal, I eat a bowl of Frosted Flakes and a huge slice of steak before I go out, which my friend Nathan pointed out "might be the most Justin Adler thing you've ever done."

--There are a ton of McDonalds and Burger Kings here. I am trying to never eat either as it's silly to eat fast food when I'm in Buenos Aires, especially because both chains defy Argentine logic and are actually more expensive to eat than in the States. It's easy to boycott the BK as I have convinced myself that not eating a Whopper in Buenos Aires will somehow hurt the bottom line of the BK in the University of Arizona Student Union.

However I cracked with the McDonalds the other day and got the official Justin Adler combo, two hamburgers and an icecream sundae. It ended up costing me $4.60 USD, which is more than in the states. I think Argentina wisely has a dumb motherfucker tax for anybody who is dumb enough to eat American fast food, even though the rest of the city has no sales tax.

--On Monday I decided I would take the subway over the bus to school because it seemed quicker and because of everything Ludacris said about riding busses in the movie "Crash." This ended up being a terrible mistake as it lead up to the longest 30 minutes in my life.

I'm sure subways during rushhour are terrible everywhere. But from what I've heard Buenos Aires is especially bad. The subways are in short supply and only come every 6 minutes to a stop (I've been told this is slow compared to London and NYC). When the door opens at a stop people at the station will literally push everyone on the train and try to cram another five people on an already packed bus. For 30 minutes I stood there with someone's elbow in my kidneys and my hand on somebody's ass as we were jammed tighter with each of the twelve stops.

After the second to last stop, where most people got off, I looked around and everybody looked like they had been through hell and back. A better comparison would be seeing the reactions of people who just lost a Sunday night American football game in triple over time. It was the purest form of defeat I have ever seen, except instead of dealing with the loss on your mind, angry coaches and upset media all week, everyone was all too aware it was only 9 a.m. Monday morning and they all still had a full day and week of work ahead of them.

I took the bus the rest of the week, it's a little slower, but during the ride I am able to maintain a seat the entire time, where I can calmly relax, read or take a nap.

--Sorry this week's WPM sucked. It was a week full of lame orientation and unless you want to hear about my incredible success stories with the Nokia Snake game, there wasn't much to write about. Fortunately I have put together an absurd school schedule, which I can't really get into yet for a few reasons. But the future should be much, much more entertaining.

--Lastly this doesn't have to do with anything. But this is why I love Ron Artest.

Quickness

Tomorrow I'll throw down a more comprehensive blog that will chalked full of WPM details of the week. In the mean time I'm going to throw down a few photos and links and hit the night.

--I once knew a kid who claimed Entourage was his favorite thing in life. He even wrote some silly shit for his school paper declaring the aforementioned fact. Now he looks like a dumb ass as the show has litterally evolved into a giant beer commercial. Season 5 trailer...A beer commercial... Can you tell the difference.

--And would you look at this, the same dumbass who loved Entourage, picked the D-Rays to win the Series last year. Prophetic. Now everybody is jumping on the bandwagon.

--This is reason 5,425 why I love Redman. Tar, you know if we found this shit during the semester we would have turned this into an article.

--I went running the other day and I thought the smog in Buenos Aires was bad... Beijing is killing it though.

--Zune post of the day.

--Link that Hallisey sent me of the day. Bears stuck in plastic bottle.

Some random, semi-worthless pics:

I just screen grabbed this off nba.com. I'm so happy the fan of the year was a robot.


The Wall-E subte passes I said I'd post a picture of a while ago:

Nike shop in SoHo:
Some beats on the street:

Stepbrothers

I'll update this shit soon with a real blog... I promise. In the mean time, enjoy this.

Rewind

Here's a brief rundown of my last two days in Buenos Aires:

--Saturday(say in Ahmad Rashad Inside the NBA voice for full effect): Leave the house in full offseason Josh Howard mode which is the perfect way to start a day of shopping with this great Dutch girl I'm living with. I say she's great because she really is great and also because her favorite English word is "great" as everything I ever suggest is energetically responded to with "Oh! That sounds great!"

As we're about to walk out the door and head straight to Palermo SoHo, Leanardo greets us and invites us to lunch. In my head I'm thinking, "Fuck no motherfucker" because he only eats vegetarian and also because I'm still pissed that he left on "Bridget Jones Diary," which ended up leading up to the current gayest moment of the trip.

However, it's not like I can be a dick and tell him no, so we end up going. On the way we meet two of his friends which are perhaps some of the weirdest motherfuckers I've ever met. Both of them were Brazilian yoga teachers (remember Leanardo is in Buenos Aires only to study yoga), one looked like a female Ronaldinho (my Brazillian references are limited) with more exagerated features (if that's possible) the other looked like a 1950s Brittish nun. So at this point I'm pretty messed up walking the streets of Buenos Aires with my great Dutch friend, weird-ass Leanardo, and two more Brazilians who are both carrying yoga mats on their back.

(Aside: As I am writing this the great Dutch girl just walked in the room. I asked how her day was. "Oh it was so great!" she replied. I really hope somebody else is finding this as funny as I am)

Back to the story, shit gets deeper (c) Frank White.

We then walk another 15 minutes as I continue to freak out. We make a stop. Oh great we're finally here. Nope. We're now at Leanardo's yoga headquarters, where we pick up his yoga master, a profession which I then learn exists.

If asked you to draw a picture of a stereotypical homosexual who wasn't flamboyantly gay, you would probably draw a perfect portrait of the yoga master.

Shaved head, but still able to his receding hairline, tight-fitting clothes, but nothing flashy, a perfectly gay amount of stubble, and one diamond earring in his right ear.

At this point I damn near lost my mind.

Another 10 minutes and we get to the ridiculous uber-vegan restaurant. I had one of those life-altering moments as I sat at a table with the great Dutch girl, Leanardo, the Brittish nun, the female Ronaldinho and a guy who only eats sausage that is attached to humans.

Despite being in a JR Rider-like mental condition, I didn't want to eat anything. I tried ordering miso soup, but the waitress said they didn't have it that day. I said "fuck it then" in so many words and then cursed the bitch out in my head for not having miso soup and not playing Fiona Apple in a vegan restaurant.

All that being said I was pretty happy when Leanardo moved out today.

--Sunday: Hit the artisans' market in San Telmo with the two Colombian girls and Ed, the 78-year-old.

First, I need to give some more backstory on Ed. Again he's 78, in Buenos Aires for his first time as he's trying, but failing, to learn Spanish. He was in the marine core, lived in Chicago, Gilbert, Arizona, and currently calls Los Cruces, New Mexico home. He's hard, hardcore conservative Republican, who dropped the N-word on me about 20 times within the first day I met him.

He constantly starts political battles in the house, knowing everyone in the house hates Bush and all of his others views. Then he gets frustrated because nobody even comes close to agreeing with him or seeing things his way.

For a while I was of the "Fuck Ed" belief. But after a while I kinda figured out how to hang out with him and now he's alright.

We go the market, which really didn't have shit, except for a pair of bootleg Arsenal shorts that I contemplated buying Spicker but then decided I didn't want to keep in possession for the next five months. Spicker in case you were wondering they were red and only cost 10 pesos, roughly $3 USD.

Then we went to this incredible restaurant nearby where we had a dope and fairly inexpensive meal, $15 USD for huge tenderloin and mashed potatoes.

Really I was just happy to have had a great meal with such a diverse crowd as the table featued myself, Ed (the only man I have ever met who openly hates Martin Luther King Jr.), a Colombian TV star and another Colombian girl, who has been to a Jamiriquoi concert, which earns her a ton of points.

I'm actually wildly in love with both of the girls as they're incredibly nice and really sweet people. I just learned today that the one is kind of a TV star in that she was on some educational TV show and she's currently an actress on the Colombian equivalent of "Punk'd." They both offered to show me the city should I ever make it up to Bogota, which I obviously need to do.

There's a lot more I'm forgetting about the girls, but if you bring up Escobar and cocaine around them it's like bringing up Hitler and the holocaust around Germans. Also they told me it's legal to walk around with up to two grams of coke on you in Colombia.

---Unrelated stuff:

-----The new MURS album. It's free, thanks to Hurley, which I only support because it's owned by Nike. It's another MURS and 9th Wonder collabo. Maybe I'll drop a mini review of it later on...

----Who the fuck is pretending to be Nathan Runbeck on the WPM comments? I'm so perplexed by this. My god it better not be Spicker.

----Speaking of Nathan Runbeck, who I believe is a huge Stella Artois fan, at the grocery store you can buy 40s (or whatever the metric conversion is) of Stella for about a 1.50 USD.

---Coming up on WPM: Incredible television, my new favorite meal, some photos and some other shit I might remember later.

El bien, el mal y el feo

--I never saw my fiance again and according to our brief Facebook conversations, she has left the country forever. I guess it just wasn't meant to be. Turns out she even had a blog too, which featured one of the greatest lines ever:

"I want to cry but my brain is like harden the fuck up, now is not the time to lose it..."

I wish I knew more girls who told themselves to "harden the fuck up."

--I knew coming to Argentina that one day I'd tell somebody one of my random, goofy beliefs and they would walk away thinking that all Americans are retarded. The first occurrence of what I hope to be many happened when I engaged in a conversation with a Scottish guy about R. Kelly.

I convinced him that in America R. Kelly is a national hero, who can do no wrong, because in my mind he is a national hero and he was acquitted, so technically he has done no wrong. Plus he's motherfucking R. Kelly, do you even realize how deep his catalog is?

--How much do I love the Wayans brothers? Enough that I watched most of "The 6th Man" in Spanish. There's nothing like watching Dick Vitale dubbed over in Spanish. It's also weird that in the movie Marlon never takes off his UW jersey. I sat there waiting for him to watch his Vizio with Ladainian Tomlinson in a bizarro world where athletes never take off their jerseys.

--Speaking of the Marlon, did you know he was supposed to be Robin in "Batman?" (source: Aziz's blog)

--In one of the creepier moments of my life I was walking down to the subway and I heard some ghoulish music that sounded like I was waiting in line to enter Mummy ride at Universal Studios. Keep in mind that at this point I was without Brendon Frasier so I knew that if there actually was an angry mummy at the end of the stairs I'd be screwed.

In a fucked-up turn of events, it ended up being a homeless woman who may or may not have died in 1974. She had no teeth, no eyes and was just sitting there humming the creepiest shit ever.

--For a bunch of reason that I can't justify I didn't go out the other night. Tragically I ended up achieving the new gayest moment of the trip as I sat there in my family room watching "Bridget Jones Diary" with my roommate Leanardo, who is in Buenos Aires for four weeks to study Yoga. This greatly surpasses the dog Skyping as my lazyness and general apathy put me in a situation where I was watching a Renee Zellweger movie, which we all know is gayer than dog Skyping.

I woke up the next morning with a cold, which is basically God's way of saying "This is a warning. If you ever do anything that lame again I'll give you AIDS."

Today I am going to try to atone for my apathetic, gay sins and try to achieve the inverse of other night, which if my calculations are correct is blowing lines off a stripper. Wish me luck.

--Photo time:

Some UN trucks


First I was going to have my picture taken in the pilot's seat, but then I wanted to go for the whole Ma$e in Mariah Carey's "Honey" video look. So that's what I was trying to achieve here if you're curious, and yes I always think about how a rapper would take the pic before I pose for a picture.
more random UN trucks
I took this picture because Seppy's dad would have wanted me take this picture for Spencer. Spencer, if you ever get down here, we're only eating here. I'm sorry.
Trill Messi jacket.
This was some weird room in the middle of the huge agriculture convention. I had to sit in it even though I only kinda like LeBron James.
The name of this restaurant is so close, yet so far. Bu Bu Ka Ka...
Well would you look at this shit. Everybody wants to be an Arizona, but don't nobody want to be an Arizonan (c) Paul Mooney
Spicker, these posters are everywhere and there's no chance I ever live with you unless you exacto knife your Henry.

WPM presents:

Don't get too excited, I didn't get to watch any cockfighting although at some point I hope to have my own Little Jerry who destroys everyone. But I went to a crazy agriculture exposition yesterday that was much cooler than I expected.

It was great to see a million caged animals, which I'm pretty sure were all for sale for consumption of recreational fighting, in the middle of the city. It was kinda like walking through the agricultural equivalent of death row.

Remember you can click on all the images to see the larger version, which I'd definitely recommend as a lot of these pics have some crazy details.

Without further ado:

The Katt Williams bird...