justin adler, blog, buenos aires, bahia blanca, university of arizona, brooklyn, basketball, travel, paul mcpherson

Friday, September 26, 2008

More retirement musings




Note: This blog was actually written before I found out I graduated, I aplogize if it comes off as banter from an immature undergrad.

My high school algebra teacher Mr. Boyle had a poster in his classroom that said something to the effect of "In real life people don't just sit around in coffee shops all day doing nothing, they actually work."

Not I Mr. Boyle, not for the time being at least. 

I am living a life that makes Kramer's average day look productive.

I don't have a job. I don't go to school. I don't do much of anything. I just walk around the city observing silly things and taking breaks to sit in a park or grab a drink with a friend. My life is not all that incredible, but I'm sure if you compiled it right you could squeeze a 30-minutes episode of entertainment out of it.

--I try to visit a lot of museums and I try to talk to a lot of random people. The other day I went to a great art museum and afterward I talked to a kind Porteño named Gustavo for half an hour. That was a really big day.

Gustavo is an artist who works in his tiny shop all day surrounded by his hand-crafted Buddha statues of all shapes, sizes and colors. He lived in Las Vegas for four years creating statues and art for the Venetician and Wynn casinos, until a machine replaced him.

I like to think that if it came down to a John Henry-esque contest, Gustavo would easily best the machine.

-- I feel like Buenos Aires wants to get into basketball, they just don't know how. I see quite a few Porteños wearing lots of bootleg NBA gear. My favorite is the pinwheel cap which has the New York Yankees logo right next to the NBA logo. I've also seen a ton of absurdly fake NBA jerseys in sports shops; among the highlights: a Portland Sheed, KB8, Reggie Miller, a Raptors Vince Carter and somehow an Iguodala jersey made its way to Buenos Aires.

My favorite came today when I saw a handicapped person wearing an Allan Houston jersey. I like to think that guy knew what he was doing, because if you're stuck in a wheel chair there is nobody better to try to emulate than the oft-injured Allan Houston.

-- Every weekend there are tons of ferias - small open markets -around the city, which sell everything in life that you could never need. I've been to a bunch of ferias because I keep thinking that after 400 shops I'll eventually find something that could be essential to my life, but instead I just keep finding the most worthless junk ever.

Last week's Parque Lezama feria had some real heat though. One stand had a collection of 8x10-inch production stills of Leathal Weapon (I'm no expert but I'd guess Lethal Weapon 1 or 2).

Another stand had a t-shirt that had an painted picture of Tupac on it, except that it looked nothing like Tupac and more like a somebody was asked to draw a picture of a generic face.

It was such a generic bald head that the artist could have put Sinead O'Connor, Mr. Clean or Tupac's name over the head and it wouldn't have changed a thing.

-- Finally, here's my token Human Giant video of the day.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

sure wish one of amare's dance moves was shuffling his feet to get in position to guard someone or black jesus willing maybe get a rebound...