Dream team dreams

--I came home from school Friday walked in the kitchen and dropped the biggest "Ay Dios mio!" of my life. Unexpectedly a microwave sat on our kitchen table. This is huge because living without out a microwave has been a mild inconvenience and even though every day I'm accosted by children under 12 begging for a peso or two, the fact that I've had to re-heat my steak on a hot plate has made me the real victim in Buenos Aires.

Of course I was kind of enjoying not using a microwave because I figured one day back in the States I could bring up the fact that I lived five months of my life without a microwave and somehow this would get me pussy. Of course if I'm delusional to believe a girl will be sleep with me for the sheer fact that she's amazed I endured five months without a novelty kitchen appliance, I could just pretend I never got the microwave and lie to a broad at a party, but at the end of the day it's going to be very hard to bring up food re-heating methods in any social scene.

--Choripan is this amazing sandwich in Buenos Aires that is bread and some kind of sausage that is filled with amazingness. The other day while watching the street vendor cook mine I noticed his secret recipe. As he stood there grilling the sausage he pulled his half-smoked cigarrette out of the coals that were cooking my choripan. He took one final drag, then flicked the butt into the street. It was the best choripan I've had in Buenos Aires. What they don't tell you in the those retarded Truth ads is that cigarrette smoke greatly enhances most South American sausages.

--I know there's nothing gayer or more boring than hearing about someone else's dreams, but last night I dreamed I was chosen by some secret government agency to travel via slides to the center of the Earth, again I was without Brendan Fraser, so I knew if shit went down I would be screwed (I never thought I'd need Brendon Fraser so much).

While sliding down to the center of the Earth I would stop at different levels just to check shit out. I clearly remember being at the near the outer core and encountering the 2008 USA Olympic basketball team. While talking to Amare Stoudemire (who isn't even on the team) I woke up. End lame dream talk.

--I read the other day that Suns season ticket holders will have troubles getting tickets to the 2009 All Star Game because the NBA takes so many tickets for their sponsors, which scares the shit out of me because I need to go to All-Star Saturday night or the game. So if any of you out there reading plan on having a connect for tickets please let me know. I'm giving you a 5-month warning.

--Speaking of things I need, does anybody have a product key code for Microsoft Office 2007? I'll Paypal you some money if you want. Or you could just hook it up for free and I'll give you a free 50x50-pixel ad on Wherespmac.

--It's really bizarre to listen to my great Dutch friend talk with my Colombian friends because they use the word "great" in every sentence. It's nice being around such positive people and I hope they realize that although I don't say "great" as often as them I'm doing my part by eating two bowls of Frosted Flakes every day.

--I've started to write WPM posts in my notebook because some times when I'm in the city I'll think of something noteworthy that I know I'll forget five minutes later. So don't be surprised this holiday season if you get an original 1 of 1 WPM hand-written draft, because after this trip I probably won't have enough money to get anybody anything else.

--The shopping carts at the market have 4 wheels that can all turn 360 degrees therefore enabling me to drift around every aisle. I'm now the DK of supermercado shopping.

--Before I left I asked those close to me to please make sure nothing happens to Bernie Mac while I'm in Buenos Aires. Then after being here for not even three weeks I find out he's dead. What the fuck. Could you guys at least watch after the other three original kings of comedy.

--Now Isaac Hayes is dead too. Come on.

--Finally I found this online and I've now changed my BsAs goal from attending a Boca game to being there for this (40 second mark of video below).

Ed

I never expected that I would get a new grandfather when coming to Argentina, but Ed was the coolest temporary grandpa I ever had.

He stood 180 degrees away from me on every possible view of the world and he was a bit racist, but in all he was an incredible guy.

It sounds like some lame-ass plot from a bad TV show but it really was amazing that we learned to tolerate and like each other. On the first day I told my roommate Johnathon that Ed was a fucking retarded conservative. And Jonathon told me that later the same day Ed asked him if he met me before describing me as a "lunatic Liberal who was fucking out of his mind."

It was great to constantly have a 78-year-old around the house just so we could get his reaction on everything that went down. Which would usually be Ed shaking his head and calling one of us an idiot. He would frequently put people on probation if he didn't like their views. I believe I held the record for being put on probation three times in one day.

He also hated our "landlords" or whatever you want to call the couple who rent the rooms of the house out to us. He started only calling our landlord Jorge "asshole" and he would frequently talk about how retarded "asshole" and his wife were.

In a move that is normally reserved for blacked-out college freshman living in dorms, Ed tore down every sign (our house had a bunch of signs with dumb rules) in the house as an act of protest against the "asshole."

I'm not really sure how to describe this, but here is the room Ed slept in. It was bright yellow with a ton of windows and you had to simultaneously step up and crouch to enter the room.

You also had to duck beneath two small doors just to get into the room. Which makes Ed look like a monster in this picture.

Still it's mind-blowing that somebody who has never spoke a lick of Spanish in his whole life would venture to South America t0 learn the language and for that I give Ed the ultimate respect.

It was also great to have somebody constantly remind you how great Buenos Aires is. Ed must have said "God, these people sure do know how to live right" at least five times a day.

On his way to the airport to return home last Sunday our "landlords" were kindly thanking him for his stay and wishing him well, Ed responded with, "Why don't you ditch that dropout loser (Jorge) and come back to New Mexico with me."

To which Sara (the wife, who doesn't speak English) just continued to smile and wish Ed the best.

On our final dinner at a great Argentine parilla, Ed looked at the two Colombian girls we live with, Laura, 23 and Ivonne, 19, across the table and said: "You girls should come back to New Mexico with me," before pausing. "Of course you wouldn't be allowed to wear any clothes in my house."

And that is what I loved most about Ed.

I hope to God that if I live to 78 I'll be in a position where I can solicit Latin American girls one-quarter my age to come back to my home on the condition they will never wear clothes.

Stadium status

One of my main goal for Buenos Aires was to attend a Boca Juniors football game because I was told that of crazy sports venues around the world, the Boca Juniors La Bombonera stadium is among the elite.

After my experience at the FC Barcelona versus Chivas match in Olympic Stadium in Los Angeles I learned that nothing State-side can come close to the fan experience of a good football match.

Although I've never attended a Superbowl, I can't imagine sitting next to Gary, who is only at the game because he works for sponsor #7,398, who gave him tickets as a reward for closing the most deals in January, is better than sitting next to some psychopath who has the team name tatted all over his body and acts like his life depends on getting his section as hyped as possible.

The fact that I even went to the Boca opener today was odd, as one minute I was enjoying some midday raviolis and the next minute I was propositioned my housemate Johnathon to attend the game. I felt like complete shit from the night before and from my fifth cold of my time here, but I didn't hesitate to confirm that I would be going.

We hopped on a bus and arrived at La Bombonera unsure we would even be able to get tickets. At first my friends wanted to get tickets in the seated area, but a 170-peso price tag put those out of the question.

We copped some 24-peso general admission tickets and started walking through the line. The line was relatively calm, which was surprising because I thought all the cops surrounding us in complete riot gear (shield, full mask and billy club) would have had more of a reason to be in full defense mode.

We walked into the north end of the stadium and took our "seats" which were really just huge, steep concrete steps because the general area is just that gully. Johnathon, who's from London, said that terrace style seating like in La Bombonera is now illegal in England after one stadium had several terrace-related deaths do to over-selling the section.

We were 90 minutes early and I was pretty bored with how quiet everything was. I started to think that maybe the whole experience was over-hyped and maybe La Bombonera would just be mild sporting event.

I decided to get my fix of choripan, an incredible sausage sandwich that probably takes three years off your life per sandwich. Unlike American sports they don't rip you off at sporting events as I could get my big choripan for 5 pesos.

I paid and the dude behind the counter grabbed my choripan off the grill with his hand that wasn't holding his cigarette and plopped my choripan sans any napkin or plate directly on the dirty counter between us. I ate up because choripan is that good. And yes, at a sporting event I'd rather pay 5 pesos (1.60 USD) for a choripan that breaks multiple US health codes than pay 12 USD for mediocre hotdog wrapped in foil.

I then sat again waiting for shit to get crazy not knowing that I was in the calm before the storm.

Twenty minutes before the game began everyone stood up as a band began to play from the top of our section commencing what would be two hours of madness. Confetti began to rain down as everyone sang various chants. Many balanced themselves on tiny ledges and railings that stood to offer some kind of balancing help in our section. They stood and jumped up and down on the railings balancing themselves with banners for the entire game.

Then the most massive flag I have ever seen in my life came down and covered our entire section, the flag literally covered an entire fourth of the stadium.

My personal favorite fan was the guy pictured to the left in the picture above. Throughout the entire game he was passionately singing along to every chant and staring everyone in the section down, shooting us all the "if you don't sing, I will fucking murder your family" look.

He also had "BOCA" tatted across his knuckles and he had Diego Maradona's Boca jersey tatted on his forearm.

Other danced with umbrellas in the stadium and I don't mean personal umbrellas you would use for a rainstorm, I'm talking about large restaurant patio-size umbrellas.

At one point I manned up and hopped on the ledge right beside me. As soon as I got up the man already on the ledge gave me the "Get. the. fuck. off. my. ledge." look of death. I promptly got off his ledge.

There was one chant which required everyone to bounce around like we were in a mosh pit, except that we were on a 70-degree slope of 10-inch wide cement stairs.

As for the actual game Boca was in control the entire time and after a 0-0 halftime, Boca came out and scored four goals to win, 4-0.

We all stood in our seats for 15 minutes after the game until I asked my friend why we hadn't started to exit yet.

"It's because they have to let the opposing team's fans out first or we'll murder them," he said.

Then I thought about it, although I couldn't tell you where the opposing team Gimnasia was from or name one player on their team, this was my first time watching them play and we won 4-0, strangely enough I wanted to fucking kill all the Gimnasia fans.

And that is the spirit of La Bombonera. Then the real spirit of La Bombonera began to show.

Despite winning the season-opening game 4-0, after being caged up in our section for 20 minutes some fans started to get edgy.

Then people began to push everyone down as fights broke out in the crowd. It was crazy to see gaps in the crowd roll through the crowd as everyone tried to back up from who ever was trying to kill each other.

Eventually we walked through the urine-covered hallways, got out safely and walked toward the buses taking us home.

I'm currently tossing around the idea of trying to make it to every Boca home game and work my way up to the Boca/Rio Plato game, which is supposed to be sheer insanity.

--The following are pics my friend Yakub took as he was brave enough to bring his camera to the game.

This is the huge 12th man flag.
A pic of the east side of the stadium.
Note the riot police in the background as a fan scales the barbwire fence.
Cheerleaders with their asses hanging out.
More Boca




Untitled from Justin Adler on Vimeo.

Some nice photos

This is the Monumento al General Carlos M de Alvear. For some reason I liked these photos enough to give them their own post. (click images to enlarge)

100 grand on my wrist, yeah life sucks

The following is a list of events and observations I have encountered over the past few days:

--The other day while hanging in the park with my friend Matt some local kids asked us if we wanted in on their football game. We walked over to the field and sat on the sidelines with all the other players on the bench. Apparently in Buenos Aires instead of downing Gatorade on the sidelines, they are firm believers in replenishing their energy with the power of a joint. It was incredible to watch players run off the field, just to take a hit and then run back on the pitch and play an intense pick-up game.

I can't confirm or deny my participation, but I ended up deciding to not play because I forgot I was asked to play and because I was engaged in a 10-minute conversation about Ryan Gomes with my friend who goes to Providence.

--I'm slowly trying to become a Porteño (Buenos Aires resident). I have ran into a friend on the bus and the other day I gave somebody directions in the city. And by gave directions I mean somebody asked me where Avenida Cordoba was and I told them they were on Avenida Cordoba. It took everything in me to not say, "Hey take it easy! You're on third street."

--I had my first day of class on Tuesday, which was a pleasant surprise considering I thought I had class Monday until 1:00 am Monday when I realized Martes was Tuesday.

Maybe I do belong in the pre-intermediate Spanish class.

--Back to Tuesday when I had my contemporary art class. It was fairly boring and I wouldn't even mention it if not for two noteworthy moments. One, I attend a Catholic university, which is fine because I'm pretty ambivalent toward all the crucifixes and pictures of Pope Benny 16 around campus. But upon sitting down in my first class at school I look out the window and see a huge swastika etched into the glass. This was the silliest part of class until the teacher started lecturing on an artist who last name was "Schvartz."

--I thought "Schvartz" would be the funniest name I'd encounter all week, but I was wrong. In my Spanish class on Wednesday, which pleasantly lacked any nazi propaganda, the teacher wrote her name, "D'Acunto" on the board. Being the immature kid I am, my instant reflex caused me to turn around and look for a smirk from Shiffy or Spencer, who were thousands of miles away.

I can now say that not my friends not being there for a great cunt joke was the first time I felt homesick.

--Driving in Buenos Aires is on a whole different level from anything I have ever seen. There are so many intersections that should have traffic lights or four-way stops, but instead have nothing. Cars literally gun it through the intersection and if there happens to be another car, they slam on the brakes at the last second possible. It is just incredible to see this happen over and over again, all day, every day.

Whenever I have to cross the street, I wait until I don't see any cars for at least three miles, then I sprint across the street.

Buses here do not give a fuck. About anyone or anything. I've been compiling a mental list of some of the more gully moves I have seen buses make and I'll run that another day. But just the other day I was crossing a street behind a family, because I figured a mother and three kids under the age of 10 would be a great shield that nobody would want to kill and because sometimes it's cool to have no shame and use a small family as a human shield. I was wrong. A bus came within 8 inches of wiping them all out before they jumped out of the way.

Two nights ago I went on the wildest ride of my life in a cab. Spencer, Spicker and Andy this ride beat our drive-through-the-streets-of-Oakland-with-no-headlights-at-high-speeds ride, which I thought would never be beat. The dude was flying through busy streets, dipping in and out of cars, blatantly running red lights. There were times when the lane merged from two to one lane and he would barely miss running into a wall and cut off a bus at the absolute last second.

He was cutting between buses like Walter Payton would cut through defensive linemen. If there were semis on the street, I have no doubt that the motherfucker would have Fast-and-Furious-ed his way under the semi.

My friends were talking to each other like the plane was going down, declaring their love for everyone. I just sat there in awe.

--There's a ton more that I don't have time for right now. Here's some quick photos:

Sunday in a park in Recoleta, where my friends and I messed around with some slacklines. My friend Matt is sick at it, my personal record was four steps.

There was Brazilian dance fighting going on, as people free-styled Brazilian music in the back.
This guy was crazy, he spent 45 minutes dancing by himself then went around the entire park on his knees shoveling cigarette butts into an empty Pepsi bottle with a stick.
This is Ezekiel, he was just a random guy at the park who killed the slacklines.
This is picture of him jumping from slackline to slackline, he would bounce around all of them, like a trampoline. He would jump from the slackline to tree and back the slackline. He was insane.

My friend Erasmo

Erasmo is a quiet kid from Southern California. He's the kid who is always where everyone else is, but he usually doesn't say a word.

The running joke for the first week was the Erasmo doesn't speak a language. Which was just an incredible joke for someone (not myself) to even conceive.

It always blows me away to think about the language links that occur in every conversation I have down here. Normally I speak in Spanish, while my mind is always thinking in English. I've spoken with other people whose second language is Spanish, so therefore I'm converting my English to Spanish which someone else is then converting to German, which seems like a lot of work for a simple conversation.

Erasmo, whose name I'm not sure I'm spelling right, was different. For the first week it was literally impossible to figure out if he was fluent in English, Spanish or neither. I was pretty amazed that I had met someone over the age of two who was possibly not fluent in any language.

Then I started talking to Erasmo and I realized he actually speaks English and Mexican Spanish fluently, which ruined the made-up persona I had given to him. However after talking to him I learned he was even crazier than somebody who doesn't speak a language.

After talking to him for a while, I learned his favorite thing in life is a good rave, and the lifestyle that goes with it. Erasmo then told me he brought his clickers with him for his 1-year stay in Argentina.

Clickers are little lights you hold in your hand that upon being clicked can light up white, a color, or alternate. There primary purpose is to enhance dancing in raves; this is all according to Erasmo.

I thought long and hard about this, then I looked Erasmo in the eye and said, "Wow Erasmo. You did it. You found the absolute least important thing anyone could ever pack for a year trip in a foreign country."

He laughed. Then remembered he only brought two colors of clickers and got mad at himself for not bringing more clickers.

Erasmo is now my favorite person in Buenos Aires.

Why I hate the bus

After enjoying a great day at the park I decided I should head home, have some dinner, write a quick blog and go to bed.

I took the 93 bus to the park and was instructed by my Colombian friend, who knows the bus system rather well, to take the 93 back home.

Simple enough I thought, it was about a 30 minute bus ride to the Recoleta Park from my place in Palermo, after the bus ride back up north I should be home by 7:30.

The bus starts heading south. It's cool I know where I am. Then we head further south, I'm still cool as I know exactly where I am and I'm confident the bus is going to eventually turn around and head north taking me to my Palermo stop.

Then we keep heading south and we hop on the freeway. At this point I start to realize I'm kinda screwed, but I try convincing myself I know where I am.

Twenty more minutes pass.

I look around and see that I'm in a pretty shitty area. I'm probably in Boca I think to myself. Boca is the barrio famous for being home to the Boca Juniors, but it's also not a place you want to be after dark if you don't know the area. If you meet anybody who was robbed in Buenos Aires, there's a good chance it happened in Boca.

I stay on the bus figuring it's my best bet, despite the fact that the bus driver is mimicking the Universal Studios backlot tour as we rode over a rickety bridge and entered some street that entirely blocked off.

However instead of driving through a soundstage with King Kong and crashing helicopters we entered the end of the line.

It was me (obviously lost), the bus driver (ready to take his break or end his shift) and some knucklehead who refused to get off the bus.

Fortunately the bus driver was nice and he told me that if I wait here I could take another bus back to my block, but it would be a 1-hour ride. He also told me that we were south of Boca, which is as far away from Palermo as you can be without leaving Buenos Aires.

Finally after 2 and a half hours of taking the 93 to infinity I arrived home.

Granted I took the 93 heading the wrong way and the whole thing was my fault, but here's a list of things I told myself in an effort to convince myself otherwise.

There are no clearly printed bus routes in Buenos Aires. To figure out where you are going you have to use the "Guia T," the bus guidebook. However instead of having pages of maps showing each bus' route it is perhaps the most confusing book ever created.

I could explain to you how it works but it would take about 1,000 words. It fucking sucks.

Sometimes bus stops are nothing more than a electric pole with a 6-inch number stuck to the top of the pole.

The absolute worst thing about the buses is that you can only pay for your ride in coins. This wouldn't be an issue if there weren't a coin shortage in Buenos Aires. Seriously coins in this city are like gold. Many vendors will not give you change because they either don't have any or because they don't want to part with it.

You can't even go to the bank and ask to convert a 10 peso bill into coins.

There is no way to buy a bus pass. There are no transfer tickets. The only way you can board a bus is with coins. Yesterday I used the last of my coins, which I had been hoarding. Now I have to go buy something from the corner store just to get change. Because of this I will probably buy more Tic-Tacs during my 5 months here than I will buy in the rest of my life.

Waiting for the bus anywhere in the world sucks. It's a general rule of life that whatever bus you don't need will come to the stop first. Yesterday while waiting for the 93, at a stop that picks up the 93 and 111, the 111 came three times before the 93. Then when the 93 eventually came there were two 93 right on top of each other.

At least it's better than Canada.