Perhaps the Bush Girls Will Be Next?

Get a load of this.

Art=Oil, Religion=Water

This is jaw-droppingly... I don't know what... the reason the religious kooks in this country are so... so... kooky! Serously. And in Boston no less!

A Media Gadfly

This irks me to the core.


I don't like to discuss politics in public. As I've said before, if my many long nights of bartending taught me anything, it's that talking about religion or politics just fucks things up.

That being said, in response to the recent shootings in Virginia, I have an overwhelming bad taste in my mouth about the (and forgive the buzzwordiness of this next one) sensationalism of the situation in the media. And now some jackwad wants to have his fifteen YouTube minutes by making short films out of the shooters scripts?

This country is in some serious trouble. No wonder the rest of the world hates us.

Best. Sign. Ever. (Part 2)

Back when we were in Trieste, I saw this sign and was convinced it was the best in the world.

Today, I found stiff competition on this great actor's blog.

How does one decide? Which is really the world's greatest sign?

In other news, check out these two ways to manage credit card debt:

SNL via consumerist.com (video)


Fresh Air with Terri Gross (audio podcast)

If you haven't already, now is as good a time as any to chop up those credit cards!

Back in Iceland-- Bjork, nowhere to be found...

We are back in Reykjavik, waiting to board our flight back to NYC. (Keflavik Airport is the only one I've been to where internet access flows freely)

The wedding was great, our rented flat was gorgeous and I'm exhausted.

This is a slightly blurry version of what people getting married in London look like.


And these are professional wedding guests.

So I'm sitting here nervously hoping our luggage fiasco was one-way only, and that our poor manhandled bags are currently being loaded onto the plane we board in an hour.

In other news, plans are in the works for Cardium Mechanicum's first full production, and the Crush Project is still plugging away.

I have a busy schedule coming up, involving the Cardium show, my partner Ed's thesis reading at NYU (this will most likely be something we produce fully in the near future-- it's great!) and rehearsals for Macbeth. Good thing we got all this traveling in now, because it looks like I'm not getting off the island (well, save for Brooklyn) for a few months.

Bella Italia

It's been days since our bag was returned to us, tattered and torn as if having come straight from a bender ending in a bad one-night stand, but with all contents in place. And yes, for those of you following closely, the piece of the wedding dress I was carrying was in there and it was returned intact. (I didn't mention this on either of the previous panic posts, since I was, well... panicking my pants off that I was going to have to tell a nervous bride that Bjork was wearing her dream dress!)

Anyway, a few days in Italy can really make you forget that anything was ever wrong. In the entirety of your life. We have been well fed and well rested, perhaps more of the former than the latter, but we're relaxed.

We spent Easter (Pasqua) in Florence with Will's aunt Deanna and her husband Roberto's family. My Italian is not as bad as I had feared-- I still remember some. That was Feast number 1.

Yesterday, we were invited to Donatella and Pasquale's house for lunch. This is the stuff that they make those romantic mid-life crisis movies about, where the overworked American just takes off for the rolling hills of Italy to learn to make pasta. Donatella and Pasquale are Will's folks' neighbors down the hill, and their generosity, hospitality and good-neighborliness is unparalleled. Donatella could kick Mario Batali's ass without breaking a sweat. Feast number 2. (oh, and did I mention that the day we arrived, Pasquale stopped by to bring some fresh ricotta that they had just made? That has been an ongoing feast.)

So today, Will and I went on a nice long walk over to Montone, the town across the valley. It was probably about 5K all told, and we probably barely nicked away at the impact the homemade pasta made on us, but it was lovely just the same.

We leave tomorrow for Rome, then Thursday for London where I make the final hand-off of the dress. *PHEW!*

And in other news, there are no single people in the Midwest, and all my single girlfriends should move to California. Check this out.

A Public Apology to BjÖrk BjÄrney

Word on the street is that Bjork has released her evil grip on our bag and sent it off to the Queen. The poor bag should have arrived in Berlin bright and early this morning, by way of Reykjavik, London and Munich.

The bag has had more of a vacation than us!

Will keep you posted, as am sure you are glued to your moniter following the latest news on this topic.

In other news, Will and I got haircuts today.

The excitement never ends!

Icelandic Pop Princess, My Ass!

Isn't Bjork great?

Let me answer that for you. No! Bjork eats luggage. I repeat: ICENLAND'S ONLY DIVA STEALS THE BAGS OF INNOCENT TRAVELERS!!

I've been in the same socks since Sunday. That's right, we are having the worst airline karma of all time.

We left JFK more than 2 hours late on Sunday and arrived in Reykjavik, Iceland about 45 minutes after our connecting flight left for London. After being told that the next flight to London would not get us there in time to switch airports and make our flight on another airline to Berlin, we accepted a transfer to a flight to Oslo, Norway that would get us to London two hours before our EasyJet to Germany. Confused? Yeah, try it with jetlag and remnants of a hangover!

So we got to London around 5. Our bag did not make it. We reported it to the baggage control folks and resigned ourselves to the fact that there was little to no way in hell that we could get across London at rush hour to make our flight.

We ended up spending the night near Luton Airport at the world's most generic hotel chain, the Holiday Inn, where we feasted on over-priced microwaved meat and crap wine imported from California (go, Globalization!). Waking up at the crack of dawn, we trekked over to the airport and after a hellish battle with the line that would never move, we checked in and got on our flight. (London's Luton Airport was experiencing a conveyor belt meltdown-- they couldn't get the luggage out of the check-in area. Luckily, our bags werer already lost.

We arrived in Berlin to find that the dumb girl Will spoke to at our hotel had only booked us for one night. Luckily they had a room for us last night, but we had to find another hotel for tonight and tomorrow. Then this morning, when we checked out, she said that she had to charge us for Monday night because we didn't cancel.

So I'm billing Bjork.

The Holiday Inn bill, the night in Berlin we didn't use, the EasyJet ticket-change charge (Will bought travel insurance, but we had to pay a fee upfront and supposedly the insurance company will refund us-- that should be fun and unspeedy!) and seventeen new pairs of socks. It's about 400 pounds. That's like double-dollars, mind you. And the Holiday Inn had this neat little trick where they made their own exchange rate when you used an out-of-country credit card, the Bastards! They had a pound running at about $2.04 when my exchange calculator puts it at about $1.97-- granted, it's only seven cents, but they microwave meat. Need I say more?

So unless Bjork decides to let go of her vicegrip on our clean clothes, I'm taking a cut of her next album, since it will most likely feature songs about the contents of our suitcase. Damn you, Nordic Elves!

I See London, I See... Berlin? Rome?

You know how hard Will and I have been working lately, slaves to the grind, nary a moment's rest. Well, we've decided to treat ourselves right and finally take a much-needed vacation.

Kidding. We know we're really lucky to be able to do all this travling. I jokingly say that it's merely because none of our friends can see fit to get married in the US. But it's really fun to have a reason to fly here and there. Will was just doing some reading up on people who have their own personal jet.

It seemed like he was really envious, so I asked him do you want a jet?

His reply?

Well yeah, but I'd probably need to get a job to get one, so no.

Jobs can really clutter up a schedule, you know?

Today we leave for London, arrive in London tomorrow morning and leave for Berlin tomorrow night. We're there for a few days, then we head down to Italy to visit with Will's dad and sister for a week or so before we head back to London to watch my friends Bill and Julia get hitched.

Last night we went to the New York version of Sang and Lisa's wedding. We have to leave for the airport in a couple of hours, but we're moving sort of slow today-- I think we rolled in sometime around 3am. It really takes me back to the days of my early 20s (all eight years ago) where closing a bar was a 3-4 night a week affair (often solely because I was working behind said bar... I wouldn't want you to get the wrong idea...). But now, staying out so late keeps me feeling young.

But that could just be that last glass of wine talking...

Anyway, I must remember to pack one very important thing (besides the sleep mask). I'm carrying a piece of Julia's wedding dress. She asked me to pick it up, since the dress shop is on my street. I keep having mini panic attacks, thinking we'll be in the air somewhere over the Atlantic and I'll suddenly realize that it's on my bed in the East Village. But no. That is not going to happen. Especially since I've just gone into all this super-fascinating detail about it here.

I'm going to sign off and put the dress piece in my GD suitcase already.

(p.s. In other news, the Crush Project is back on after a travel-related hiatus. We're looking to post one podcast per day, Monday through Friday. Check it out here-- we've recruited some new voices! And I think I may have finally come up with an idea for the next step-- details TBA).