Final Answer

This wasn't how it was supposed to happen.

It's not how I envisioned it 12 years ago when I saw Allen Iverson declare he was leaving school early for the NBA.

Over the last decade my goal changed from wanting to be Allen Iverson to wanting to be the guy sitting on the other side of the table with the notepad on his lap and the recorder in his hand.

Then I decided that I didn't want to become a sports reporter, but there was still a huge part of me that wanted to be Iverson.

Unfortunately I was not blessed with the a lightning-quick first step or any athletic ability for that matter, but I'm still trying to emulate Iverson.

So just like Iverson, I'm dropping out of school.

OK, so maybe it's nothing like Iverson, since I'm announcing my declaration to leave school on my personal blog and Iverson announced his in a press conference that ran on ESPN. There's also that whole thing about Iverson having guaranteed millions waiting for him and me having nothing but the promise of an empty bank account.

Additionally I plan on returning to class in January, unlike Iverson who probably couldn't tell you where a classroom is on the Georgetown campus.

Abandoning the A.I. analogy, after a ton deliberation I decided to temporarily drop out of school for a number of reasons.

I have honestly put so much energy and thought to dropping out that at one point I considered staying in school just because it was the easier route.

As I've mentioned before school here is hardly stressful or overwhelming, in fact it's so unstressful and boring that every minute I sit in class my soul dies a little bit knowing I am wasting precious time in South America.

I can't pin-point the exact time it hit me, but I think while I was sitting in my family room watching my Guatemalan roommate sing along to Natasha Bedingfield's "Unwritten," I realized I should stop going to school, get out and feel the South America rain on my skin.

I figured I wouldn't even be losing much if I did drop out, the only downside would be switching from a Spanish Literature major to a Spanish minor and having to pay back my father a couple grand in tuition money, which is now essentially wasted. Although I did get to meet some great people in the school and I still plan on going to Birds, so in retrospect it was not entirely wasted.

I also figured that if I left school I could get my mother out of the rough ghetto and make enough money to afford the special care for my sister's seizures, no wait that's Allen Iverson again.

My biggest hold-up was ensuring that I would still be eligible for my scholarship should I not receive any credits this semester.

I've never called a 1-900 number before, but I can't imagine a phone sex operator saying anything more filthy and gratifying than what my scholarship adviser told me.

"We actually have no way of seeing what you are doing down there, we don't check to see what you did when you come back," she said. "As long as you come back in the Spring and sign up for 12 credits, you'll have your scholarship."

With that I was basically free to go, but I still spoke with 900 other people to make sure I wasn't overlooking something that would come back to bite me.

Technically I'm still in school and still on track to receive credits down here, so if you have a good reason for me to stay in school please lay it on me. And because of my current mindset a "good reason" needs to be something along the lines of, "My friend just graduated UA with a journalism and Spanish degree and is now making six figures, mainly because of his Spanish literature degree."

The tentative plan now is to leave Buenos Aires in the end of October and begin backpacking South America, which ties into reason 215 I'm dropping out: to be like Che Guevara. In 1948 Che took a year off from studying at the University of Buenos Aires to travel South America by motorcycle.

During his journey found the inspiration to fight and die for the cause of the poor and dreamed of uniting Latin America, all of which he chronicled in The Motorcycle Diaries. I'm just hoping to find Paul McPherson and do a halfway decent job of blogging the experience.

Food & no liquor

When I came down here I thought I'd be living in a homestay and have some Argentine parents who would cook me dinner every night, but that didn't come to fruition so instead I've been learning to cook.

I honestly can't remember what I normally cooked myself in Tucson, but I think my culinary repertoire consisted of rice, some times rice with chicken and if I wanted to spoil myself I'd cook a steak.

When I tried pulling that same shit here I was laughed at by my roommates, who always cook themselves meals that I would consider extremely elaborate, and by extremely elaborate I mean more than rice-and-chicken variations.

When I first moved in I made myself some rice and my roomate looked at me and said, "You know Justin we're not in a third-world country, you can eat more than rice."

Then the next day I made some pasta and my great Dutch friend (who has since moved out) said, "Justin! You eat so fucking unhealthy," as she not only was making fun of my shit culinary skills, but my propensity to say "fuck" as well.

When I first got here I was also eating steak five to six nights a week just because it was so cheap, but now I've kinda figured out how to make some decent dishes.

I still have little-to-no cooking skills, but I've figured out that if I combine everything I know how to cook into one meal it turns out half-way decent.

My current favorite meal consists of rice, sautéed and seasoned steak, mushrooms and fried eggs. This is obviously nothing more than me combining my normal breakfast with dinner and leaving out the Frosted Flakes part, but the meal is pretty solid.

Here is a picture of my dish from a couple weeks ago, before I realized I could combine it with my breakfast.

And here's the first WPM recipe:

-- A bunch of white rice

-- 2-3 fried eggs

-- A lot of steak, I cut it up into small pieces and only cook it for about 90 seconds (it's became a hobby of mine to see how raw I can eat the steak down here).

-- A decent ammount of mushrooms which you sauté with the steak, but sauté them for longer, in whatever kind of cooking oil you can steal from your roommates

-- Salt, if you want it authentic Justin Adler style, add gratuitous amounts of salt to every part of the recipe and then add some soy sauce at the end for good measure.
-- For some reason it just taste better if you prepare it while listening to R. Kelly, for this platter I was feeling particularly inspired, so I bumped "The World's Greatest."

Here's more food-related notes:

-- I generally eat dinner around 8:00 because I find that my "salty steak rice delight" goes great with the 8:00 episode of "House." Then usually my roommates will cook food up later so I'll get down on their dinner, which is always better than mine, two hours after I just ate my own dinner. I'm not sure how I lived the first 21 years of my life with only one dinner.

-- Because my friend Matt is just the trillest kid ever, he decided to buy two cow brains becuase he'd never eaten cow brain before and Buenos Aires is as good a place as any to begin eatting brain.

After watching Argentina tie Paragauy in the World Cup qualifiers, a couple friends and myself went over to Matt's place to dig in on some cow brain.

He let them sit in water all day to make removing the membrane easier, so I helped Matt peel the membrane off for a while until I got bored and decided to be lazy and hang out with my friends in the family room

We then played Gin Rummy in the family room and listened to Luther Vandross, while Matt prepared and fried the cow brains.

Finally Matt brought out a platter of fried cow brains and we all sat there, listening to Matt sing along to every line from "Welcome to Jamrock" while eating cow brains for the first time.

Verdict: pretty decent, nothing great, very weird texture, good with soy sauce.

-- I've somewhat adjusted to Buenos Aires social time, but it's still consistently amazes me. Last week my house dad/landlord, Jorge, invited all the guys in the house out for dinner. We didn't end up leaving our house until 10:00. Then we finished our dinner at 12:30, to which the 65-year-old Jorge proposed we go out for some drinks. We eventually returned home at 2 a.m. on a Monday night.

-- I always thought the movie "Super-Size Me" was retarded because if you eat anything everyday of the week you'll probably die. That being said I'm waiting to O.D./enter the Guinness Book of World Records for eating Frosted Flakes every day.

I am a serial cereal eater, who lives with a French guy named Cyril, which has nothing to do with the story other than the fact that I wanted to use the same sound three times over. Unfortunately the only American cereals sold in Buenos Aires are Frosted Flakes and Fruity Loops and Justin Adler doesn't do Fruity Loops.

Therefore I start and some times finish every day with a bowl of Frosted Flakes and the last day I can remember not eating a bowl was when I was in Rosario almost a month ago.

Kelloggs, if you're reading this, hit me up with a sponsorship and by sponsorship I don't mean more "Kung-Fu Panda" stickers, I've already collected all six, thank you very much.

-- This has nothing to do with food, but to all my friends/loyal readers in Tucson, here's a huge heads up:

The National Public Radio program Talk of the Nation Science Friday will be on campus Sept. 19

The National Public Radio program Talk of the Nation Science Friday will be on campus Sept. 19. The program will focus on the Mars lander, and will be broadcast live from the UA Phoenix Science Operations Center from 11 to 1 p.m.

Guests will include Peter Smith, principal investigator of NASA's Phoenix Mars Mission and the Thomas R. Brown Distinguished Chair in Integrative Science from the University of Arizona. Students interested in science journalism or radio-news careers may be interested in being in the audience.

If so, please leave your name with April or Heidi in the journalism department's main office (Marshall Building, third floor). Seats are very limited, so please sign up only if you are sure you can attend. Please sign up as soon as possible. No reservations can be taken after noon Friday, Sept. 12.

I can honestly say that seeing Neal Conan host a live Talk of the Nation at UA was 9,000,000 times better than seeing Kanye West perform his Glow in the Dark Show. If you're in Tucson, go to this event.

Just some thoughts and stories

-- Whenever I'm strolling through the city I always see things that would make nice gifts for my friends and family. I'll often see a unique item and think about how happy it would make someone else, because that's just the kind of guy I am.

However there is so much trill shit here, that I'm not sure who to give what, then one day while thinking about people besides myself, it hit me. Why not just buy a collection of trill items and have all my kinfolk play a game of Yankee Swap/White Elephant for the gifts.

The idea is still in the beta stage, but I'm thinking it could be a grand time as everyone I'm close with will get the chance to Yankee Swap for a gifts ranging from Boca jerseys, Maradona posters and hand-crafted mate gourds to shit like a grain of salt that says "BsAs." Keep in mind that the whole write-your-name-on-a-grain-of-salt phenomena doesn't exist in Buenos Aires, so if you end of with that gift you're really get shafted with a bootleg BsAs grain of rice.

The only qualifications for the Buenos Aires Yankee Swap gift exchange extravaganza are that (a) I have communicated with you since I've been down here and (b) you have g-mail. And to accommodate my friends all over the world (I see you Eric Gobright) I'm thinking of hosting the extravaganza in a neutral setting like Portland (for obvious reasons) or Ed's house in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

-- Last Sunday while I was strolling through the San Telmo Market with my friends, some lady who heard us speaking English asked us if we were backpacking through South America. We told her we were actually studying here and then tried to force more small talk with us.

After telling us she was a flight attendant who was on 24-hour layover, she told me she was from Scottsdale, Arizona. I shrugged and told her that I'm also from Scottsdale and then she lost her mind.

She told me she lived in Gainey Ranch (a particularly lame part of Scottsdale) and then she suggested we take a picture together.

She busted out her camera and hugged me as I made the smile you make after you've been annoyed for the last 90 seconds by some stupid bitch flight attendant who happens to be from the your hometown, which you really don't like to begin with.

Then she asked everyone within a five-foot perimeter for a pen, because she was steadfast on sending the picture to my parents. After she bothered six people, I stopped humoring her and told her it was OK and I could just remember the moment.

She finally got her hands on a pen and I gave her my e-mail address because I told her my parents don't have e-mail addresses (which is partially true).

She then blabbered to me some more and brought up her husband, who she twice referred to as "Mr. Wonderful." Then after annoying me for another couple of minutes, the woman, who appeared to be 55-years-old, gasped, looked me straight in the eyes and asked, "Oh my God! Do you know where there is good graffiti in this city because I love taking pictures of graffiti?!"

I firmly and promptly crushed her and let her know there was a museum with a South American graffiti exhibit, that featured the most amazing graffiti I had ever seen, but the exhibit ended a week ago.

Finally I freed myself from her clutches, looked at my friends and then broke my streak of not using excessive profanity as all I could manage to say was, "Wow. What a stupid cunt."

-- Few of you will actually believe this, but yes I'm actually trying to reduce the amount of profanity I use.

-- I finally figured out how "House" is created. They just steal ideas from "South Park," the other day on "House" a girl pooped out of her mouth; there was a whole episode of "South Park" about this. Then tonight the show opened with a kid being strangely abducted and left on his front lawn in his pajamas with his ass bleeding, blatantly ripping the episode where Cartman is anally probed by aliens.

-- The other day I met this cool Chilean girl who had about 9 million tattoos, she had multiple neck tattoos (although none as dope as "Ra Boogie" or "Black Jesus") and she had "SOXR LIFE" tatted across her knuckles. This was the one tattoo I asked about, which stems from my love for "WHIT EBOY," and she told me she didn't want "SOUR LIFE" because she didn't want people judging her from that particular tattoo.

If it weren't for the excessive tattoos and my knowledge of her abortion history I probably would have gotten down simply for the fact that she started the night by playing "Da Rockwilda" and then phased into a De La Soul and Blackstar medley.

-- I kick myself everyday for not going to the show advertised at the top of this post. Gertrudis and Perrovaca translates into Gertrudis and Dogcow and JESUS FUCKING CHRIST I just watched their YouTube, why didn't I go to this?!

-- I'm pretty used to manifestaciones these days. As I walk up the subte exit and hear the drum banging I now just hope for some excitement and am usually disappointed. It's gotta be a pretty big let down when your manifestacion only warrants nine riot police officers.


Here if the riot police tumbler I spoke of in a previous post.


-- I was quite proud of my Spanish skills the other day. I figure any schmohawk can ask, "Dónde está el baño?" But it takes some real skills to bullshit the hostess of a nice restaurant and tell her your looking for friends, then use the bathroom and pull the ol' fake conversation on the cellphone trick as you walk past her on your way out.

--Now it's time for other peoples' stories...

These are my two good friends here Matt and Erasmo.



They both live together in a homestay with a mother who runs one of the larger breast milk cartels in Buenos Aires. They tell me that every Saturday morning there are six to ten women sitting in their family room pumping their breasts for milk.

They also told me their refrigerator has a whole shelf full of breast milk. I constantly suggest we have a party and sneak all the breast milk as if it were our parents' liquor cabinet in high school.

Plus I want to become a oenophile of South American breast milk to the point where I can decipher a woman's age and ethnicity from one sip.

--- Recently Matt, who I would describe as the chillest kid ever, if I used the word "chill," got robbed three times in one week.

The first time someone stole his $130-peso binoculars out of his backpack, which sucks because now he has to buy new binoculars for Birds.

The second time someone tried to rob him by coming up to him and saying, "Tengo un machete dame su plata (I have a machete, give me your money)." Matt acted like he didn't speak any Spanish and refused to give the guy anything. The best part of the story is that the robber didn't realize machete is the same word in Spanish and English.

The third time Matt was by himself slack-lining in the park, this is Matt's new favorite pastime. Then three guys came up and joined in for a minute. Then one of the guys gained interest in Matt's ear buds which were hanging from shirt collar. Matt was reluctant at first, until the guy lifted up his shirt to reveal a gun in his waste.

Then the other two guys came up to Matt and took everything out of his pockets.

Somehow Matt remained cool the entire time and then began haggling for his stuff back, he ended up getting his wallet back after they took all four pesos out of it. Then he started to mock them as they went through his backpack.

He told me clearly pointed out how worthless everything in his backpack was to them. "This is a towel. This is a notebook. This is a book in English, you can't read that," Matt told the robbers.

In the end Matt only lost his iPod and cell phone, which he never activated any ways.

-- Matt is cool enough to the point where I respect him even though he goes to Providence and doesn't know who God Shamgod is. This is normally a mortal sin in my book. He also came to Buenos Aires without a camera and obviously has no intentions of photographing any of his trip.

--He also is anti-cell phone since he never used the one he had and he has no intentions of buying a new one. He uses the ideal concept of everyone sticking to their original plans and being where they say they are going to be. I really wish my friends back home who have a cell phone, but refuse to ever pick up calls (cough Andy and Spicker) would adopt this practice as it would cut out the frustration of calling them.

Matt recently replaced his binoculars with an monocular which he now always keeps in his front pocket and uses like a cell phone. If somebody is not where they are supposed to be at the arranged meeting time, Matt will pull out his monocular and search for them.

-- There's too much about Erasmo to recount, but he recently found some Rastas in the park and then went to their apartment where two people spent five hours dreading his hair. He is also trill enough to the point where he can pull off carrying a purse-like bag.

-- Finally this is the last blog I'm writing with FF3. I just wanted to thank Firefox, but now it's time to move on to the future.

Pictures of the quality variety

This is a collection of the nicer pictures I have taken over the last couple of weeks, as always click for full-size images.

Above and below: Puente Mujer... Check the Wikipedia of bridge architect Santiago Calatrava, the man is God.


This is the bench where I read books from time to time.


This shot was taken from the top of the Monumento Nacional de la Bandera in Rosario.


Some chuch in Rosario.


A biker/pastry seller in Rosario.


Some Rosarino graffiti.


Me, myself and I. My main boy Jonathan had the idea for and took this photo, I also have to credit him for the Palermo night sky picture that's atop this post.

Pictures of the silly variety

While I was taking a nap on the Monumento Nacional a la Bandera in Rosario, Laura decided it to take a picture of her stabbing me. It's now on Facebook with the caption "Muerte al Yankee," which I find funny, but not as funny as a Colombian wearing a Juan Valdez sweatshirt.

I'm not sure how much this blog might help somebody traveling Argentina, but now I can at least recomend people a good restaurant in Rosario, Argentina to watch Florida Panthers games. I forgot the name but it's on la calle de Entre Rios somewhere.


Here is the hotel Jonathan and I stayed at in Rosario, which is right next to the Florida Panthers hockey restaurant.

There are a lot of stray dogs every where in Argentina, but this one was my favorite. Every time I saw him in Rosario I chuckled just because I like the concept of somebody putting a t-shirt on a stray dog. It was just hilarious to see a stray dog with a shirt on, I wonder if he feels superior to other strays because of his shirt or if maybe he is ostracized by the stray community because of it. I had so many questions for this dog.


This is my favorite magazine in Argentina.

This photo illustration was in a Cordoba newspaper after Phelps won his 8th gold medal. It's really just brilliant.


This sign is on every bus in the city. I understand the first three symbols, but I have no clue what the fourth means. Seats reserved for people carrying prosthetic legs? Seats reserved for people carrying odd-shaped fishing rods? If you have an idea, leave it in the comments.


Sometimes I wear silly glasses.


This picture came from a wall in a hostel in Cordoba.


This picture came from the same room.

This is a picture of the Winning Eleven club that is at the end of my street. I meant to run this story a month ago, but I walked under the sign for weeks before some kids pointed it out to me. I actually went up to the club once where they had six televisions and a bunch of PS2s to play WL. It's basically just a sick WL loft in the middle of Palermo.

This is a photo from the San Telmo market of some guy doing some weird shit to some woman. It's really not a good photo and I have no idea why I'm running it on my blog.


Every Sunday when I go to Plaza Francia to hang out with hippie in Buenos Aires I always look at the slack lines and say "I've never seen slack-lining like this before," in the same way that Sway says "I have never seen stepping like this before" in Stomp the Yard. And nobody ever gets it.

Seriously every week the slack-lining gets more intense. Last week they raised the slack line to 12-ish feet. Then after an hour of setting it up, everybody pussed out and nobody did it.

Keeping it underground

There isn't much worse in life than being on a jam-packed subte with people coughing all around you.

And I don't think I've ever been as uncomfortable as the time I rode the subte during rush hour and was forced to stand with my crotch firmly pressed against a 65-year-old, 4-foot-9-inch woman's chest for 30 minutes. However there are a lot of great elements of the subte that make it worth the ride downtown every day.

Here is my collection of the trill elements...

-- First and foremost is Casimiro (pictured above) who rocks my subte stop every weekday afternoon. To say that Casimiro inspires me and gives me hope for humanity would be an understatement.

I was first impressed with Casimiro when I saw him for the first time after I moved out to Palermo and began using the Ministro Carranza stop. I really liked his voice and he could carry a pretty solid tune, from the 30 seconds I listened to him every day. It's also great to watch him happily bop around the staircase playing his guitar with such emotion for hours a time, every day.

While trying to describe his style to my friend all I could come with is: "It's everything you like and nothing you don't."

After hearing him a couple of times I decided I should buy his cd, but for one reason or another I didn't end up buying it until four weeks later.

Finally I bought his cd and gave him some extra money just because I admired his incredible work ethic as much as his musical talent. It's also great because now I have my subte stop soundtrack forever.

Although I highly recommend catching his live shows because his acoustic guitar sounds great with the acoustics of the staircase, you can check out his MySpace.

Better yet, watch him sing my favorite song "Prefiero tu sonrisa (I prefer your smile)" and don't miss his interview and footage of him singing in the subte.


-- Although Casimiro is the best talent in all of the D-line, some times I'm treated to other acts, such as a saxophonist and an inferior guitarist. If I'm lucky I'll get two different sets in one day. And if I'm really lucky I get the Ministro Carranza all-stars, which is what happens when all the musicians come together to jam together (this amazing moment is captured in the video above), although I've never had the privilege of seeing the rapper.

-- The city tries to provide its own entertainment, but it ends up falling way short of Casimiro. But I do appreciate the "Mas cine en el subte" campaign just because it reminds me of the Ruffenach cinema series of Tucson.


For those of you who don't know about the Ruffenach cinema series it's an exclusive summer movie series put on by my family-friend Dr. Ruffenach, who from my understanding runs every hospital in Southern Arizona. Dr. Ruffenach spends all year thinking about which films he wants to showcase, then has his close friends over to watch the movies.

Then during the most crucial moment of the film Dr. Ruffenach will talk over the film to state an incredibly obvious fact, such as the bad guy from 10 minutes ago is the same guy whose on screen now, he's just wearing a different color hat.

Somehow this actually enhances the viewing experience.

Ministro Carranza's cinema series isn't as epic as the Ruffenach's, but it is nice that every day at 19:00 you can watch a some great film fragments.

-- When the subte televisions aren't playing classic film fragmentos they are normally playing this show which features the creepiest digitally animated elves I have ever seen.


--Other subte things that make me happy:

---- Getting a free newspaper every day.
---- Knowing that most of the time the newspaper will have topless Argentine models.
---- The day I read an article about Mike D'Antoni, whose name was spelled D'Antony for some reason. The article also called D'Antoni/y "el hombre con el bigote (the man with the mustache)."
---- I believe that I'll be immune to every South American common cold after living here for five months.

-- My final favorite part about the subte is seeing Utah Jazz powerforwad/center Mehmet Okur's tag everywhere. It was pretty sneaky move to purposely misspell his name, but fortunately I'm really good at detecting Turkish professional basketball players' tags.

My favorite things

A lot of people haven't asked what my favorite thing about Buenos Aires is. Well here would be my answer...

Is it being able to buy 24 ounces of quality steak for under $3 USD?

Is it being able to walk out on my patio and see the gorgeous view (pictured above) every night?

Is it paying just over $300 USD for a nice place in the middle of Palermo, where I can walk to hundreds of swank restaurants and bars?

Is it being able to go out to those nice restaurants and have a three course meal and a couple of drinks for $25 USD?

Is it being able to go to the clubs every night and know that hot Argentine girls are just one ecstasy pill away? (Note: I don't club that often and I've never done ecstasy, but that's a popular option for a lot of Porteños)

Is it meeting a million South Americans and learning about a new culture?

Is it watching an incredible tango shows at 2:00 in the morning?

Is it all the other stuff I have blogged about for the past month?

No, the greatest thing about Buenos Aires is that I can watch "House" five nights a week on the Universal channel. Not only do I get to enjoy the sheer insanity that every episode of "House" provides, such as in tonight's episode when Dr. House slid a cadaver out of the morgue then pulled a gun out of his coat and shot the cadaver in the head. But it's always broadcast with Spanish subtitles so I can learn the Spanish names for all 100 of the one-in-a-million diseases that are mentioned in every show.

So let's just say that on my subte ride to school I meet someone that has recently gone blind, had a heart transplant from somebody who had Erythropoietic protoporphyria and then begins bleeding from his eyes and ears, while his left leg goes numb. I could calmly say, "Este es un latum de diphyllobothrium que esta causando haemochormatosis," press play on my Zune and carry on with my day.