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...

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."