Calling all Loungers

Post this week! Let's get this van a-rockin'! Hells yeah!

Catfish at the record shop

Go buy the New Pornographers Twin Cinema and the White Stripes Get Behind Me Satan.

Trust me. Just do it. Or Just Do Them, I guess, buy the records and trust me.

Catfish at the clubs

So, what have these fair readers missed since the Sufjan Stevens show?

For starters, Alejandro Escovedo.

Texas’ own mix of Dylan, Joe Strummer and Willie hit Congress Tuesday night, the day the desert dwellers drank in 2.29 inches of rain, the most of any single day in the past 22 years.

The man is a legend, the legend is a man. He was wearing a tie-less black suit, with slick-backed hair and looked nothing like a man who’d been beaten down by disease.

He could rock as hard or as quiet as he wanted, but he rocked.

It was the type of show where you’re just drinking in the singer’s presence, washed out and surrounded by the sound of the performance.

Some of Stu’s friends came down earlier this month on a tour of their own and while I missed their set, I did carry guitars from a basement and sit in a plastic chair in an alley next to a van, drinking cheap beer. And some of the boys journeyed with me to catch the Bad Monkey.

The Old Pueblo loves its own, harbors a heartfelt, solemn respect for those who tread its streets. A woman whose fingerprints are all over the Tucson music scene died recently. I never knew her; I missed the punk scene here in the mid 1980s because I was in elementary school. But I gave my $5 to the benefit show and saw the re-united Fourkiller Flats play one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. It was as if the Beatles were native to Tucson and never quite got out, broke up and were playing a one-off benefit show. All their best friends were there, the bar compatriots and the folks who spent three years wondering where the hell the Flats went. The tunes were so comfortable, so damn well done. Incredible.

This weekend will be incredible as well. Viva Tucson. Viva Desert Rock. Viva.

burn this city

Second night of the concert rocked.

Foo Fighters. Holy shit. These guys know how to rock a crowd. Aow! Fuck. Yeah. Dave Grohl. A new rock hero.

Robert Plant. To hear the voice of Led Zeppelin live. A classic rock experience.

Franz Ferdinand. I was so buzzed off the first two, these guys seemed too young and fresh and popular to do anything that mattered. But I was high enough in the end that when they busted their last few songs I was running around knees high and when they sang something about "Burn this city" I had entire buildings on fire in front of me that I destroyed with lightning from my hands. Shake. Tremble. Zap. Powwww.

brake

I'm in a period that will be a bit slow to update the bike trip.

There's a two-day concert in Paris. Afterwards, I have to move apartments, then I fly to the States for two weeks. And if any of you is in New York, Philadelphia, Tucson, Phoenix, or Denver, I hope to see you on Finnagain's US Tour Fall '05. But I'll try to keep up the bike trip tales during that time.

This concert is great. Last night's major events were The Arcade Fire, Queens of the Stone Age, and the Pixies. The Arcade Fire is my favorite new band and I think their album is totally unmatched this year. Best Album of 2005. I can't even imagine another album coming close. I hope you're all familiar with them and if you're not, you're missing great new music. Their live show was unbelievable as well. I didn't realize how big the group is. There are 8 people in the band and they play all different instruments and change instruments during the show. Their energy and their style is so unbelievable. I won't say more so as not to overwhelm your anticipation, but if they ever come to your town, you should check them out. I spent 6% of my entire net worth to see them, so you have no excuse.

Queens of the Stone Age were good, but I'm only familiar with several of their songs. Dave Grohl did not play with them even though he's going to be onstage tonight with the Foo Fighters. The Pixies were really great. But I was really tired and stoned by the time they finished the show that it was all I could do to stand on my feet and stay conscious.

Tonight is Foo Fighters, Robert Plant (from Led Zeppelin), and Franz Ferdinand. Garth listened to the Robert Plant album this week and loved it and bought it and has been listening to it a lot and apparently it is really great. I read a review that said so, too. I think Franz Ferdinand will be really good on stage, too.

And, I must mention the smaller bands we saw yesterday. The Subways and Hot Hot Heat were really energetic and rock and roll. The stand-out group, though, was Athlete. Really fantastic music. They made a really unique atmosphere. I liked their music.

I'm a really bad music reviewer. You know what they say. Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

Which has led a friend of mine to create a dance about architecture.



PS. Before I forget. Bob Dylan's coming to Paris on November 3. Anybody want to see him with me?

bike trip: 7

We got to the gray 2000 year old town of Tournai that evening. The center of town held early medieval gray stone towers. Blockish, unadorned, tall. We rode in to the town's main square, an open plaza of restaurant seating with a statue and fountains that shoot up out of the stony pavement, as the millenium old tower behind us belted out not a few notes of jolly clock song, but a deep and mysterious melody of bells that bounced off the red and blue and yellow sky back to the grey plaza in red shadows. This is Belgium, said the bells. A forgotten land in the annals of history, yet here have a Belgian people lived through the changing seasons and the slow centuries. Open your ears and heart and mind to Belgium. Its song is the song of man and man's civilization that persist to exist indifferent to your indifference. Our history is no less grand than Egypt, Rome, or Londinium. But you must turn off the main road to the quiet fields to hear the hauntingly beautiful piccolo bells blowing in Belgium.
Garth appeared so moved by the bells in the square that she might have cried had she not resisted enough so that she might form words. "Oh, that was so beautiful." While the bells rang, Paris looked so limply around the plaza, evidently not listening to the bells at all, that I feared he would interrupt their song with some vile, dissociated word. Luckily he waited until after Garth spoke to misidentify the statue in front of us.
"Look, guys, it's Joan of Arc," he said, pointing to the statue of a figure on a horse in the middle of the square.
"It's probably not Joan of Arc," I said.
"Yeah, it is," he said.
My argument was going to be that we were in Belgium, not France, and that if you peered closer at the statue, the figure depicted upon fighting horseback seemed to be a man. I began to worry that on some level, Paris was neither aware that we were in Belgium, nor that the statue was not one he had ever previously seen. I had told Garth on the first day that this trip would not go well for Paris if he imposed his prefabricated ideas of what he will see and feel over what the trip will turn out to offer us. Maybe now was the time to tell Paris that--no, no, not yet. So he's not paying attention to the statue. No point in calling him out right now. We're all having a good time, besides. It's a beautiful town on a summer's eve. Let's go drop our stuff at the campground, then come back into town and enjoy ourselves like real free, young people. Tonight, let's have fun. The day I call him out, it's gonna be a bad day.
We went to a campground. An actual paying campground. When I handed up my four euros and we set up our tent in a neat square yard, next to and across from identical square yards, I felt cheap. We were surrounded by tourists. How could we be sure to tell ourselves apart from them. we were safe and even walled in by tall bushes on three sides. But it was sensible for tonight as it allowed us to return to town with a lighter load with all bags and backpacks protected.

"I'll get the glue wine," I said. "I want to drink some glue." The only thing cheaper than the cheapest wine at the night shop was the wine-like drink used to make warm wine in winter, called by its German name, Glühewein. Paris bought a normal wine and Garth would share from our bottles. So here we were in Tournai, the night ours to enjoy.
We sat against the pillar of the statue in the main square. At the end of my pointing finger, I directed Paris's attention to the beard and manly brow on the axe-wielding fighter on horseback and to the name--Guillaume or Pierre or whatever. Whoever it was, it was not Joan of Arc.
"It looked like Joan of Arc," said Paris.
We sat and watched the different people file by. A gang of ruffians inquired if we had any "matos"--materials, materials for constructing a joint. Alas, no. Couples walked by arm in arm. There seemed to be a trend of people walking towards our left.
"They're going to the sexy club," said Paris.
"Monday night?" I said.
"Yeah, I saw it back there," said Paris. "Total sexy club. Garth, I wanna go to the sexy club. We should go to a sexy club on this trip. Oh my God, Amsterdam, oh my God. Garth, we have to go."
"We'll go to the sexy club," said Garth.
"Oh my God, Garth. Look!" Paris pointed to two young men, fashionably but casually dressed, heading towards our left. "Oh, the sexy boys are going to the sexy club. I wanna go!"
I drank glue.
"Oh my God, Garth. Aren't the boys in Belgium so sexy? I want a sexy Belgian boy. Oh my God, Garth. Do you remember the boys we saw on the way into town? Oh my God. Belgian boys are the hottest. We have to go to the sexy club. Do you promise, Garth, we'll go to the sexy club?"
I felt the red skin of my wrists. Still hot. I pressed them to my bottle to heat up the glue wine.
"Guys, this is so much fun," said Paris. "I love Tournai."
"Garth, some glue?" I said.
I passed Garth the bottle.
"You know, when I was in fifth grade, we had this police officer come to our school," I said, "to tell us to stay off drugs. His name was Officer Friendly. He came to speak in front of our class in full police blues, toolbelt, and gun. He told us a story about some boys who liked to sniff glue. Well, they died, so they were brought in for an autopsy. The examining surgeon stuck his scalpel to the boys' abdomens to cut them open and figure out exactly what caused them to die. But he couldn't even slice the scalpel through the boys' skin because they had sniffed so much glue that their bodies had become completely stuck together with all the glue in their systems. Couldn't even cut through their fleshy tissues, so much sticky glue. I told my parents about this fact some five years later and they laughed, saying it couldn't possibly be true. A body can't become stuck together from sniffing glue. Of course, by now I realize it makes no sense at all. But, oh, Officer Friendly, he lied to me. I was none to pleased about that.
"The next year, he was replaced by Officer Funk, who, during his monthly visits, travelled from class to class with a boom box blasting so-called fresh hip-hop tunes in the corridor. You could hear him passing all the morning until at last he came to your class. I remember one day he was going to tell us how cocaine is made. 'Filthy South-American Indian slaves,' he said--and I was paying full attention thinking I was gonna learn something fascinatingly exotic-- 'these filthy dirty indians gather the such and such plant into vast pits dug into the ground. They have no other way to crush the leaves that will become cocaine than by stamping it with their feet. Now would you want to lick somebody's stinky feet? I didn't think so. Now what hapens if you spend hours a day stepping on leaves with your bare feet? What do you think happens to their feet? Maybe they'll start to bleed a little?... Now these indians are slaves. That means no bathroom breaks. But they gotta go to the bathroom somehow. Where do you think they go? That's right. In the leaves. So now we got stinky feet, we got blood, we got poo-poo and pee-pee. What else do you think gets mixed in with cocaine?' He took suggestions from the class. 'Throw-up?' 'Sure. Throw-up.' 'Farts?' 'Yeah, maybe farts, too.' He looked around the class silently, building tension for the finale. 'Now if you're an indian, fartin', poopin', bleedin', peein', and throwin' up in the same leaves day-in, day-out, what do you think might eventually happen to this indian?... He might... He might... anyone?' The logic wheels'd been turnin' in my loaf o' bread and I figured I knew the answer he was looking for. I raised my hand and said, 'He might die?' Officer Funk claps his hands, 'That's right. He dies. But no one cares. No one's gonna clean up his body. So guess what else you'll find in your stinky feet, bloody, poo-poo, pee-pee, throw-up cocaine now?... Thanks for listening. Don't do drugs.
"He exits, stage-left, boom box blasting this fresh hip hop:

DARE to keep a kid off drugs
DARE to keep a kid off dope
DARE to something something something
DARE to give a kid some hope

"Officer Funk. What a scam artist. He probably wasn't even a real police officer. Oh and I remember at the end of our training we all had to sign a pledge saying we'd never do drugs. And for extra credit, we could write an essay about why we'd never smoke cigarettes. Side note. A girl from our class won the statewide essay contest against smoking. In high school, I saw her smoke cigarettes. And then last year she won the Miss Arizona contest and competed in the Miss America pageant."
"The poor indian," said Paris. "Nobody even cleaned up his body."

We rode home to the campground. Garth was astonished at my ability to ride with no hands. But she kept trying to stop me from doing it cause I was drunk, so she said. "But look," I said, "I'm riding with no hands... and I'm not falling down."
"Stop it, Finnagain," she said. "You're gonna fall."
"Nuh-uh," I said.

"Finnagain, where are you going?" said Paris.
"To the campground," I said.
"It's this way," said Paris, pointing a way that was in all ways the wrong way.
"No, it's no-ot," I sang.
"I don't think we should go this way," said Paris. "We were totally never here before."
"Remember that abandoned factory of horrors in film noir shadow that's on the way to the campsite?" I said.
"Yeah?"
"The one we're right next to?"
"Oh."

"Just take your hands off for one second," I said to Garth.
"No, I feel like I'm gonna fall," she said.
"No, just go along, feel your balance, then take your hands off for one seconds... then try for two seconds... then eventually... It's really not that hard," I said.
She took her hands off her handles for one second and slammed them back on.
"I thought I was gonna fall," she said.
"You'll practice. You'll see, it's not hard," I said.
"I don't know how you can do it, and turning right and left," she said.
"I saw the kids on my street do it when I was little and I thought it was so cool, so I tried it out, just like I'm telling you to do. See, look, it's so easy. No hands. Even though I'm filled with gluuuuuuuueee..."
I controlled the bike into left and right sways with no hands, like the bike itself was drunk.

bike trip: 6

"Oh, Garthy!"

"This is a great place."

"Couldn't this street totally be America."

"Oh, Garthy!"

Reeeeeee-urrrrrr. Wooooooooooooo-oooop. Reeoo-reeoo-reeoo.

I rode ahead, Garth rode behind and Paris shuttled between us delivering his messages. Garth honked a horn. it had been Paris's. He had fastened it to Garth's handlebar to make room for the police siren on his own. I saw the two of them fifty yards behind me, waiting. I rode back to them.
"Paris thinks we should hide out while the weather's bad," said Garth;
"It's not that bad," I said.
"It's raining," said Paris.
"We gotta get some food before the stores close. We saw that sign for the supermarket. Two kilometers," I said.
"We shouldn't be out in this weather," said Paris. "We could get struck by lightning."
"As far as we ride to find a place to hide, we could make it to the supermarket. Come on. Ten minutes," I said and pedalled onward.
Ten or fifteen minutes later we locked up our bikes in front of the supermarket. I was looking through canned foods with Garth.
"You're not the only person on the trip, Finnagain," said Garth. "Paris is one third of the group and you should consider what he wants, too."
"If it made any sense," I said.
"You're the risk-taker. The keep-moving-forward guy. Paris isn't like that but it's his bike trip, too."
"Why doesn't he come talk to me himself?"
"He wasn't complaining about you. I just thought it wasn't nice when he was saying he wanted to wait out the rain and you just rode off like you made your own decision. You have to let Paris be part of this bike trip."
I picked up a can of spaghetti.
"He can be part of the bike trip," I said. "He wanted to hide from the storm--so I said it was only two kilometers to the supermarket and here we are. Safe, sheltered. Where else was there to hide out there? Under a tree? What if that gets hit by lightning? And, listen, we have about 1500 kilometers to cover in the next 30 days. We can't stop every time there's a little rain or we'll never make it. The riding's not gonna be easy. It's a lot of work, we ride all day, a few little breaks and then ride and ride and ride. Besides, to be honest, I'm gonna have this anxiety until we get to Amsterdam. That's our first major destination. We'll be staying there two days and then taking the train to Berlin. And then we're really travelling. All this--France, Belgium--we know the language, we're just moving town to town, town to town. Amsterdam's the destination. And besides, to be perfectly honest, there we will have coffeeshops, we will get mushrooms, and quite frankly, I really can't wait for it and I feel pressed to keep moving til we get there. And even more so, I feel quite ecstatic at the prospect of a joint easing my mind into blithe calm and peace because Paris is--Don't you...?"
"He can be a little annoying but you still have to respect that he's part of the trip. We don't just do things your way cause you speak with authority and always know where we're going--"
"I do always know where we're going."
"--but it's not up to you. It's Paris's trip, too. So listen to what he wants and we will all discuss our plans as a group."
"Okay."

bike trip: 5

In the dark that night, I heard Paris unzip the entrance of the tent. He was tying a tarp on to cover it. Rain began to blast down seconds before he crouched back in. He was only lightly soaked but a few seconds later we would all be totally drenched if he hadn't tossed on the tarp. It rained hard hard hard and we were all awake now in the tent.
"I don't know what woke me up, but I could smell the rain and I knew it was gonna rain," he said.
"Holy shit! Listen to that rain. We'd be soaked if it weren't for you Paris. It's so lucky you did that," I said.
"I smelled the rain," he said.
Garth mumbled half asleep, "Will our things be alright?"
"My bag's out there," I said, "but I'd be drenched in two seconds if I go outside. And I'd never get to sleep. Cold, too."
"I don't know, I just smelled the rain."
"Good work," I said.

We woke up for real several hours later. The ground was wet and the sky was cloudy and cold. I hefted on my wet backpack and marched up the hill with Garth's cell phone to walk along the highway, hitch a ride to the next town, Cambrai, and telephone Paris where I was once I had my new bike. Back at the tent Garth and Paris would pack everything onto their bikes and eventually head off to Cambrai.
I walked backwards so the drivers could look me in the eye when they refused me a ride. Me, walking alone with a backpack and a thumb. Them, in their luxurious cars they had so much money for, travelling twenty times faster than me, empty seats in the back, but no! No chance of sharing their speed and comfort for one who doesn't have a car. Me, who's obviously a serial murderer because I walk on the side of a road. In my face, they saw the dreadful features of a man who sticks his thumb out for carrides with as much ungallant cowardice as he slashes his knife across innocent throats. And maybe it's cause I'm an American, too. No French person would dare parade along the side of a public motorway witha button-down shirt whose sleeves end a miserable three-fourths of the way down his arm. And those blue jeans. American. And those sneakers. Wearing them for comfort, is he? Comfort. All those Americans want is comfort comfort comfort. Go look for your comfort in Iraq, why don't you, American. You won't get it here in the back seat of my car on these thirteen kilometers to Cambrai, France.
A car came from the other side of the highway and turned around to pick me up. The driver was a man in his fifties. We conversed in French.
"I saw you coming down this way, but I had all these boxes in the back seat. Then I said to myself, oh, but this young man, walking all this way alone... So I moved the boxes there on your left and I came back. I'm going to Cambrai, by the way, so I can take you as far as there," he said.
"That's exactly where I'm going. That's perfect," I said.
I explained about my need to purchase a new bicycle and he said he was going right to a huge commercial zone where I could find a good outdoors store. He noticed my accent. I told him I was American and I'd been living here for two years.
"Your French is unbelievably good for an American," he said. You'd think the guy never heard an American speak fluent French before. And you'd probably be right. The conversation turned to comparative lifestyles.
"So much in America," I said, "is about chasing the money. And finding solutions for your problems with money. I came to france for the joie de vivre." Pause. "But."
"But," he agreed. He knew what I was going to say.
"Yes, it's changed I lived here four years ago for a few months. It was wonderful then. a feeling in the air in Paris that makes eveyrone fall in love with living there. A major city but so charming. So simple. All the people so laid back. And cheap. Living was cheap."
"It's the euro."
"Everything's got so much more expensive. And life feels hard now. All the faces in the metro. So gloomy. You can see the people are tired."
"There's not enough jobs any more. In the town where I live, there's no jobs for anyone. If you have a job, you stay and you work. You work harder. We used to think we had job security, but now we don't know."
"I was refused for a working permit. Six months ago. Six months I haven't worked."
I told him the convoluted details of my visa situation. Like every French person I've told, they think it's wrong wrong wrong but nobody goes knocking on the door of the Minister of the Interior to demand justice that I be allowed to work.
But I explained to him, "Now that I've learned to survive with almost no money at all, I see that whe you're deprived of all material things excpet the essentail, you relaize how much most things yo used to buy or used to want are not important. You consider what you have and you appreciate it so much more. And especially, you realize that the people you love are most important and just spending good time with them can make you happier than anything you thought you needed to buy.
He nodded and shook his head and nodded. Most people don't understand when I talk like that. In any case he understood I was a friendly guy.
"Thanks for picking me up," I said.
"Everybody is so scared, thinks any person they don't know might be a serial murderer," he said. "But I don't think so."
"You have to take the risk," I said. "If everybody thought everybody else was a serial murderer and hid from the world like that, well, then it's like you've made everybody a serial murderer. That's the world you believe to exist."
"Yes," he said, "people must not be scared of each other."

I found just the right bike. Bigger. To support my weight with the backpack so the back tire doesn't get squashed again. Taller. So I can ride like a normal person, not all crouched over like a toad. Newer. The old bike was used. I thought it a bargain at 80€. This one was new. Shiny. With a bell.
As in stood by the cashier, clutching my throat while the credit card machine sucked out 130€ I earned last January, Garth and Paris showed up. I told Garth about the hitchhike ride while Paris bought riding gloves.
"Aren't they gorge!"

Since I just shelled out this staggering sum, more than a quarter of what I thought I would spend on the whole trip, I figured, what the fuck, let's eat somewhere nice for a change. There was a horrible-looking cafeteria across the parking lot that wa bound to have ridiculous imitations of proper cuisine rotting under heat lamps for just a few euros more than I would pay to eat yet another can of green beans and the cheapest cheese on the shelf.
The joint was nearly empty.
"It's so depressing here!" remarked Garth. "I love it. It reminds me of North Carolina."
"Wow, this is so ghetto!" said Paris.
It was too early for any hot foods. We walked along the cafeteria tray line picking up things like bread rolls, a donut, cold tuna salad on a leaf of lettuce on a cold white paper plate, an orange, a banana, coffee.
We sat in a booth.
"This booth reminds me of Florida," said Paris.
"Reminds me of North Carolina," said Garth.
It was around this time that Paris pointed out anything that reminded him of America.
"Guys, isn't this place ghetto? It's great," said Paris.
I had inisisted to Garth that Paris's use of the word ghetto was derogatory. She took it to mean a complimetary appraisal of a person, place, or thing. We haggled over the nuance of it among ourselves, but she now turned to Paris and directly asked, "Paris, if a thing's ghetto, is it good or bad?"
"It's like bad... but in a good way. In a cool way. Or it's cool... but in a bad way."
I found this answer to be satisfyingly meaningless. I had explained to Garth earlier, "I don't care if he means it in a good way or a bad way. You must understand he doesn't even think about it when he uses this phrase. he uses this phrase because he's heard Paris Hilton use it. And what Paris Hilton is to Paris is a model of perfection. She is a flawless epitome of whatever he believes her to encapsulate. Be it glamour, be it wealth, be it fashion, be it snob, be it fame. He aspires to one or many of the above-listed traits. The closer he comes to Paris Hilton, the closer he comes to the desired trait. Now I don't take Paris as a literalist when he describes a thing as ghetto. I doubt he's ever seena ghetto nor had his heart exposed to the real miseries that give the ghetto its reputation as an undesirable dwelling-place. Undesirable, that is, to those who seek fame and glamour and other things like clean toilets and massage showers or casual weekend getaway cottages complete with coffee pot, rustic fireplace, and a picturebook of places called Toscana, Santorini, or Oahu. Nothing like that will be found in the ghetto by one who would seek them there. So if he doesn't literally know what he's talking about, why does he persist in classifying a great many things under this borrowed terminology? I will tell you why. Because he's only thinking aboutParis Hilton and trying to get closer to Paris Hilton and every time he says a thing's ghetto--and he may as well say gorge--all he really wants to express is that he sees himsefl a devotee of Paris Hilton and he wants all aorund him to acclaim him near the goddess that he worships. The definition of ghetto and gorge is trivial compared to the simple way he feels declaring his love of Paris Hilton through repetition of her words. It's as if the words I hear come out of his mouth are, "I am the arbiter of fashion," when he declares something gorge and I hear, "I want always to be beautiful," when he declares something ghetto."
"But he just thinks it's funny. He's not serious."
Paris went on to point out everything that was low quality about the restaurant. Garth and I were just as aware of the poor lighting, the tired workers, the fat teenagers with greasy hair, the poor quality of the food, the service, the booth, the chairs, the cofee, the ice machine, the silverware, the floor, the ceiling, the wooden beams, and the dirty windows overlooking an ugly parking lot, we just didn't feel it added to our time pointing each one out.
In the bathroom, which was around the corner (so ghetto) in the adjacent fluorescent-lit mega supermarket, we took turns going to the bathroom, brushing our teeth, washing our face.
I was alone with Garth while Paris was away. She directed my attention to the hideous old woman at a nearby booth with flabby hippopotamus arms and a drooping maw into which she shoveled mashed potatoes.
"When I'm old I want to look like that," she said.
"Nooooooo!" I cried.
"Wouldn't it be cute to be a fat old woman. Bluh bluh bluh." She imitated the chomping jowls of the booth beast.
"Nooooooo! that's horrible. Please don't turn into that."
"Oh, I will. Won't you give me a kiiiiiiiiiiiiiss when I'm like that? Bluh bluh bluh."
"Of course I will."

The clouds seemed to be making way for more sun. we put on more lotion and headed out. A late start ot the day, but we hoped to cross the border into Belgiu by the end. Only noon and I'd already spent 134.65€.
"Oh, Garthy!" cried Paris.
We followed signs for Valenciennes at the Belgian border. The road we were on led us, to our complete surprise, to merge with traffic on the major auto route linking Paris and Lille. Suddenly we had gone from fields and farmhouses to deafening trucks and cars going 70 miles an hour. Valenciennes was only 10 kilometers away, so I thought we could survive on this road until then and get a better one after. A truck going the opposite direction honked three times. The driver wagged an index finger at us. I waved back. On we rode with tony of high-speed metal flying around us.
A green truck with flashing lights came by a little too close for comfort. It appeared to be stopping in our so-called bike lane which was actually just the shoulder of the auto-route. The driver honked and we stopped. Only Garth was just far enough ahead of Paris and i that she heard nothing of the truck over the raging auto-route noise.
"Garth!" I cried.
"Garth!" screamed Paris. He banged on his sirens. I rang my dinky bike bell furiously. Garth heard nothing and kept on riding away.
"You must get off the auto-route at once," screamed the man who stepped out of the vehicle. They were highway security.
"We were just following one of the smaller--"
"This is not for bicycles. You have to go now or we call the police."
"We meant to--"
"Your life span on the shoulder is fifteen minutes. In the traffic it's two. We see this all the time."
"We'll go. Can you go tell our friend up there?"
"Okay. And we're gonna wait at the off-ramp to see you get off this auto-route. Never for bikes. Never."
We saw them talk to Garth half a mile ahead of us. We all proceeded up the off-ramp with a little thanks-for-saving-our-lives salute to the highway security men waiting below in their green truck with the flashing lights who saw this all the time.

We went through several French towns that were thoroughly depressing and bleak. "Oh, Garthy!" I thought of Emile Zola. Germinal. What did these towns do during the revolution? What happened here during the war? Who are these people now? Paris pointed out that all the architecture was post-war. He could tell that everything was built here in the forties. It was not true. Many buildings were from the 1800's and looked it. But I wasn't gonna argue. It was the first matter of historic or cultural attention that Paris tooka pseudo-interest in.
"See that building. It was built in the forties. Everything here was bombed during the war."
We heard that ten times that afternoon.
But it's true the towns were thoroughly depressing and the same. Six teenagers sitting on the steps to someone's house. A sign that the town probably sucks. In one town I found a post-office. I had to mail a DVD of a short film I had finished editing with Paris back to the producer who was waiting for the English version.
This was a good source of laughs. Paris and I did the editing together. He's very skilled with computers. I had to add the dialogue for the English version of a film I had shot in English and French. But it turned out I hadn't gathered all the English dialogue I neede from the actors. The last possible day, I had to get four more lines of dialogue recorded and there were no actors to give it so I ended up speaking the dialogue myself. Two different characters. One male and British. One female.
When the woman gets her purse stolen I had to fake a male British-sounding, "Let him have it." And then a terrible female falsetto, "Don't let him take it!"
In the restuarant scene, I did the man's British, "This is a great place." And when the woman gets up to go to the bathroom, I dubbed a terrible female falsetto, "I'll be right back."
Paris liked to get a laugh out of me by mocking my falsetto "I'll be right back" and the overly British "This is a great place." Paris found many contexts to use the former phrase, such as any time any person left the others. And for the latter, he liked to employ it any time we seemed to be in any place.
But the depressing towns of northern France were not a great place and Paris and Garth seemed visibly distressed and quieted at each row of identical 1940's housing we passed.
Our route had shifted from Valenciennes. We knew we were heading towards Tournai in Belgium but had no idea when we might cross the border. With the dread ugly towns wearing on our mental health, we needed to be lifted into a higher state of purpose.
And then one road answered our prayers by changing from a French road to a Belgian road so suddenly that we didn't see the sign proclaiming Belgium, surrounded by a circle of stars until it was twenty feet in front of us. A noteworthy milestone in the bike trip. Paris took a picture of me and Garth in front of the sign. We had now left the country we started out in. It would all be a true foreign adventure from now on. Things would become less familiar. Already, what was this Jupiler beer being advertised on pubs? Now we are in Belgium. Remaining, the Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, and southern and central France.

bike trip: 4

We packed up our bikes to leave the pond. The sun was by no means low, but safely out of the realm known as beating down on us. After a few pedals on my bike, I called the group to hold up. Something was making it hard to pedal. I laid the bike on its side and spun the back wheel. It made almost one revolution and then the metal of the wheel frame cozied up to the rubber brake pad and came to rest. I spun it again. Same result. It seemed a slight bit out of alignment but there wasn’t much I could do. I hoped it would right itself. I’d already had trouble with my tires yesterday.
Yesterday afternoon, I noticed my tire was very low on air. I borrowed Paris’s handy six-inch long air pump to refill it. I pinched the tire. It felt solid as rock. We drove on. In ten minutes, my wheel was soft again. I pumped it up again. Five minutes later, it was flat. I pumped it up again. It went flat. Stopping our progress every thirty seconds to pump up my tire was not the solution. We were in the relatively large town of Compiègne. We asked directions to two bicycle shops. They were both closed. We were finally directed three kilometers out of town to the commercial zone where we were to go to a Carrefour—a major mega merchandiser selling everything from frozen peas and carrots to bicycles. I found a new inner tube for my bike tire. Paris found a police siren that he attached to his handlebar. It made four sounds:
Woo-ooo woo-ooo woo-ooo woo-ooo.
Reeeeeeeee-urrrrrrrrrrrr.
Reeoo-reeoo-reeoo-reeoo.
And an ascending Woooooooooooooooooooo-oooop.
With less acumen that would be expected, the manager of the sporting goods department struggled to detach the tire from the wheel and remove the inner tube. He struggled to put in the new inner tube, which, when we attempted to inflate it, turned out to be defective. He permitted me to exchange it at no charge for another inner tube that worked. We managed to get it on the wheel, get the tired over the inner tube and pump it full and strong.
We were successfully gliding down a new highway when suddenly:
Reeoo-reeoo-reeoo-reeoo. The cops! No, just Paris, making sure his police siren works.
Woo-ooo woo-ooo woo-ooo woo-ooo. That one works, too.
Ten minutes on, I could feel that my back wheel was grinding against the road without any cushion of air. I could feel myself getting impatient with myself for slowing the progress yet again today.
“It’s the back wheel this time,” I said. “Paris, give me those tools.” I got the tire off quickly, with my ear to the inner tube, I squeezed out air to find whence came the hissing through a hole in the rubber. I found three little holes next to each other and Paris had two tire patches by which I sealed the tube. I reassembled the tire and we were on our way.
Not even twenty-four hours later, I was having another problem with the back tire. How’s it gonna be after thirty more days of travel? When I got on my bike again, my back tire was none the better for having been laid on the ground. The back tire pulled almost to a halt each time I pedalled forward. There was resistance, but I could move forward. So we went forward.

As we soldiered on through the fields of northern France, we were passed by a flock of professional cyclists, all in yellow jerseys. The Tour de France was in progress. Paris sought to entertain us by insisting these cyclists were part of the Tour de France. I managed to pick up some speed. It was around this part of the trip that Paris began to employ the phrase, “Oh, Garthy!” The “oh” was pronounced in a faux-southern dialect so that it was enunciated with double the usual number of syllables. The “Garthy” was pronounced to express something like scandalous shock to Paris’s system. A caricature of moral outrage. But the word “Garthy” was never followed by another word. So that as I rode ahead and heard Paris exclaim, “Oh, Garthy!” I always expected another thought to follow, but no thought ever did, nor precede.
Paris rang all four police sirens to let us know he needed a quick water break. It was a good idea for all of us as it was a very hot day. After a bit of water, I took another look at my tire, still leaning into the brake pad. I tried to bend the wheel in my hands to conform to the straight, centered idea I had in my mind. I stepped on one end and bent the other up. I rotated the wheel 90° and did it again.
We rode on, but now I could feel the back tire swaying left and right. It was hard to move forward and hard to stay straight.
“Finnagain, your wheel is totally wobbly,” said Paris. I spent another half-hour trying to straighten it out, but it got no better. We were thirty-five kilometres from the next town. It was Sunday evening, besides, and nothing would be open. I thought of any possible remedy, but there was nothing else to be done. Nowhere to go, but to try and go forward.
So we did and Paris stayed right behind me for concern that the wheel would collapse. Now it was bending almost like a letter ‘C’. If I pedalled hard and went as fast as I could, it minimized the effect of the wobbly back wheel. Garth rode ahead. She said she couldn’t be behind my wheel because it was so strange-looking the way it wobbled back and forth like a ‘C’ and then a backwards ‘C’ that she could not take her eyes off it. She said it was distracting. Over time, I got better at it. We rode twenty more kilometres. Eventually Paris let go of his surveillance of my back tire because I seemed to be doing fine with it. I was pedalling twice as hard as I had any time in the trip and I couldn’t catch up to Paris and Garth.
We stopped again briefly for water. Upon departure my wobbly back tire proved to be an unrelenting foe. No amount of steadiness on my part could keep it fro wobbling so low it threatened to overturn the whole bicycle. One foot forward and two feet sideways. I couldn’t correct it.
I laid the bike down to give it one more essay. I stood on the back tire. I jumped up and slammed all my weight down onto it. I rotated the tire 180° and jumped on it again. The gear mechanism began to fall out of order. I jumped on it to get it back into place. Paris and Garth stood back and said not a word. This was a private affair. Between me and my bicycle. I set my backpack aside. I picked the whole bike up over my head and slammed it down on the back tire to see if that would set things back how they used to be. I noticed I was by a field of sugar beets. I felt hungry. I tore one out of the ground and beat it onto the gears. I raised it again like a great hacking axe and stuck it down again on the gears. And I beat the bike again and again and again. I ate a fragment of the beet and offered some to Garth.
Without a word, I picked up the twisted mess of my bicycle and carried it across the road. I heaved it high and the metal crashed into the metal of a telephone pole. The bike tumbled into a ditch on the edge of a cornfield. I chased after it and heaved it into the pole again. Crash. I heaved it into the pole again. Crash. I heaved it into the pole again. Crash. Garth came to the road above the ditch with her disposable camera.
“I’m gonna count to three then throw it,” I said. “One, two, three and then throw, so click the picture on four-and-a-half to get the bike in the air.”
“Four-and-a-half.”
I grabbed the bike by the handles like a schoolmaster yanks a schoolboy by both ears. “One two three.” I heaved it into the pole again. Flash. Crash. I heaved it into the pole again. Crash. I started up the hill then changed my mind. I heaved it into the pole again. Crash!

We were fifteen kilometres from the next town. It was time to find a place to sleep. I spied a sign for an abbey. Paris and Garth walked with their bikes and I walked with my backpack, the sleeping bag banging against my butt each step I walked. Friar David and his fellow monks were most hospitable every time I stayed at the monastery and I hoped that here we might find the same welcome. The abbey was somewhere down a road that curved low around the edge of a hill. Paris and Garth went ahead on bike. I was to walk down the hill and either meet up with them at the abbey or they would find me on the way back if it turned out we were to have no luck.
I walked alone under the late setting sky. On another hill, sheep grazed along the slant that led up to an enormous silo. I pondered what more difficulties we might encounter in the next month. There is a certain helplessness you must admit when you are miles and miles away from home. The weeks ahead might have many troubles, but I would take them each in the moment they came. And every moment without trouble, there was something to appreciate. Beyond the fact that you’re not in trouble, not starving or bleeding or lost in a dark forest, you must look upon the cows, slow and patient, see the great amount of work the wheat is doing to feed you in the fall, love the season that come back every year—summer that waits behind every January, cool Octobers and Novembers that follow the summer.
I met Garth and Paris at the bottom of the hill. The abbey was a historical tourist site. There were no monks praying inside it, or charitably granting strangers a roof through the night. We pitched Paris’s tent on the bank of a canal that passed through the village. The three of us would sleep in there. In the morning, I would hitchhike to the next town and get a bicycle.

There was a payphone nearby, so I called my family back home. Everybody’s fine. The trip is wonderful. My bike broke down. I’ll get a good one tomorrow that will last more than three days.
I came back to the tent. Garth and Paris asked me why they had heard me laughing so maniacally loud on the phone.
“I talked to my brother. He said he accidentally shit his pants at work the other day.”

bike trip: 3

In the morning we packed up quickly and rode off to look for a church. We had mentioned the day before that it would be fun to find a Sunday morning mass in French in a charming rural town. In a half hour or so, we found the next town and we found their church--an old structure of brown stone walls, displaying thin crosses atop various peaks vaulting over entranceways, and half-surrounded by graves that dated from as far back to 1880 to as recent as two months ago as far as my eyes perceived while I rounded the building to find a door that might be open or a schedule that might tell us when mass might be held. An old woman toed between the gravestones slowly, like she had all the time in the world. I asked if there would be a mass at this church this morning. Yes, she told me, at eleven.
I reported this information to Paris and Garth. It was almost ten o'clock. We weren't sure if we should hang around for this mass. In the meantime, we stopped into the supermarket store right next to us to restock our food supply. I still had a dry sausage donated to me by my friend the monk, Friar David. He managed to smuggle a bagful of sausages, cheeses, and canned vegetables for me from the monastery's store of charitable food donations on his last visit. The sausage served as the main item on the menu for my first few days but there was not much left any more.
"Look, guys," said Paris, "I still have my cucumber. Oh my God, I'm so hungry. I'm gonna take a bite out of my cucumber."
Paris and I went in first while Garth looked over the bikes. I searched the supermarket with one ratio in mind, the ratio described by one New York comedian as "the greatest volume of food for the least amount of money." Foods adhering to this ratio include cans of ratatouille, store-brand cereal, store-brand ravioli, bread, and then a number of things that cannot be prepared on the road: pasta, couscous, rice. Paris operated on a different equation. As far as I could tell, the equation could be described thus: "The foods I feel like having right now plus bonus points if they're really crazy." The nice side effect of this equation is that Paris almost always bought more food than he could eat. The store had very little that scored well in my ratio. I bought one banana.
So it came Garth's turn to go in. I accompanied her. My appetite came back and this time I bought a can of ratatouille, bread for us to share, and cheese. Garth does not eat animals or animal products, so she bought some fruit and a can of cashews.
When we were all assembled in front of the store, Paris remarked, "This is so ghetto."
I didn't know what he was referring to and I didn't care.
"Listen," I said, "I don't know if we can make it to this service today. I'd like to, but it's 10:30 now, we've only gone three kilometers so far and now we'd have to do nothing but wait half an hour... and then if it starts late... and then sit around for an hour at a mass just for a laugh, just to say we went and saw it and then we're in the heat of the day and we've only gone three kilometers."
"But what's the point of our trip," said Paris, and Garth agreed, "if we're always going forward and never enjoy anything along the way?"
"I agree with you totally," I said, "but I don't think there's a lot to be gained by going to a church service, something we've all seen before, when all we're doing it for is the humor value. So that afterwards we can say, Can you believe we even went to Sunday mass in Littletown, France? It's not gonna be a real hoot and a holler. We know what it's gonna be--au nom du père, du fils, du saint-esprit... stand up, sit down... body of Christ, body of Christ... peace be with you. Everyone else will take it quite seriously but we'll try to force comic value out of the experience afterwards. Let's not and say we did. I don't know why it's necessary to lose two hours just for that. Two hours to set ourselves up for a punchline we already know and that's not that funny. We alrady lost time with the flat tires yesterday. I don't think it's worth it to stay for the mass."
We all would have liked to stay for the mass but could not dispute that two hours was a lot of time to spend for one punchline.

After a few hours of biking in the sun, we found a town where to spend the hottest hours of the afternoon. The days were very long and we could bike until 10pm with plenty of sunshine. The hours of two to five in the afernoon were the most brutal, so it was during these hours we liked to spare ourselves from the sun and the effort of biking and relax with a book, with our food, with some restful hours in the shade. Signs in the town indicated an étang, which I knew translated as pond, but I chose to translate as lake.
I called behind me to Garth and Paris, "Let's unload by the lake." And so we did.
Paris took a look around. To the left, dozens of recreational vehicles huddled in a lot, voices buzzing in and out of them. In front of us, a couple of children walked languidly in front of the pond, which stretched forty feet to the opposite shore. We settled ourselves around a wooden bench. It was not the lake I had promised. It was indeed a municipal pond, but Paris looked around to the trees twinkling in the July sky and perhaps the patches of cool, green grass in the shade and ruled, "It's gorge." He continued, "I'm gonna take a shower." And he disappeared into the restroom facility for half an hour.
On the bench, I held Garth in my arms. We'd had almost no time together except at night. "Look at your neck, it's so red," I said. "Do you have some more sun lotion? I need some, too, look at my forearms." I had been wearing a thin long-sleeve shirt to block the summer sun as much as possible, but the sleeves only came three-quarters of the way down my arms, so the entire backs of my hands and distal forearm were red like a tomato. This is as far as I can go without true sunburn, I thought. I better watch out and keep the sunlotion on at all times.
When Paris came out again, he looked refreshed. His blonde hair was spiked up and wet, his skinny torso wrapped in a black shirt tucked into tight jeans that fell a long straight way down to his shiny urban boots.
We shared the afternoon in different ways. I slept while Paris read the Bible outloud to Garth in a southern accent. Garth and I read the second chapter of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to each other while Paris slept. I read the Bible intently and discovered that many of the chapters are in fact letters that Jesus's disciples wrote to the first Christian communities. I had always heard that the Bible was written by God. But I found this new development concerning its authorship to be far more interesting. God could write fact or fiction and you'd never know the difference. But if these are the writings of men, perhaps we can use our hearts and minds to read and understand their words and wonder what makes them write what they do. For we are men, too, and capable of understanding other men. From the various mysterious things I hear told about God, I can gather only that he must live in a cloud of unknowing because people say a lot of things about God that make no sense at all.

bike trip: 2

In the morning, our kind lady invited us in for coffee and toast. Showers, too. When I came back from mine, she was explaining at the breakfast table that her daughter married an American. She’s a musician, doing well living in Chicago. This summer, her band is opening for The Kills on tour.
We left with a great many thanks and a playful roughhouse farewell to Rammstein. The lady offered a more scenic bike route for us to take. We began biking across a thin ribbon of road between two vast plains of wheat, the morning sun saluting us on our right. We arrived at a propserous forest town, sleeping in the shadow of great tall trees, leaning over a path that descended and descended, letting us ride without pedaling, the breeze streaming and bubbling against our bodies. Two miles without pedaling. I checked over my shoulder to see that Garth was safe and hadn’t fallen over in the swift descent of our ride.
At last, we swerved out of the shadowy forest trail into another bright, sunny plain. In front of us loomed a long stretch of concrete atop staunch concrete pillars. A maroon train whizzed along atop it. It was the Thalys, the high-speed train that travels Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam in four hours. We would arrive in Amsterdam in five more days. The whizzing train faded out over the horizon. We pedaled. It was silent. We pedaled. Heat in our ears. We pedalled.

Our great discovery that afternoon was after an inquisition into a crop we spied all over. In many of the fields we pedaled past; there grew a green plant that looked roughly like a head of lettuce. It apeared not to be lettuce, though. Garth was long curious what grew underneath. At a moment that we had paused to drink water, we found ourselves by this same, unknown crop.
“What do you think it is?” asked Garth.
“One way to find out,” I said. I kneeled down and pulled at the thick base of the leaves. The object underground would not budge easily. I brushed to the side an inch of dirt. I dug up another inch and I could start to wrestle it free. Gently and slowly, I tugged and bent it to the side and pulled and bent it to the side and at last I pulled out a dirt-covered root as big as three potatoes.
“Do you think it’s a beet?” she asked.
“It looks like a beet,” I said.
“Let’s try it,” she said.
I reached into my backpack and pulled out a Swiss Army knife, which I had brought to open cans of green beans and bottles of wine and bottles of beer. I swung out a blade and cut a clean piece of white beet for Garth.
“Ooh! It’s so sweet! It’s so good,” she said.
“I cut myself a piece of the hard, white flesh. It felt unripe, like a raw potato. It offered a single taste of sugar.
“Sugar beet, I think,” I said.
“Yeah. It tastes so good, doesn’t it?” she said.
“Oh. I can’t believe that. It tastes so good. It tastes like sugar. Pure sugar taste growing right in this field. Paris, try some,” I said.
“Eww, that’s gross,” he said.
“It’s so good. You have to try it,” I said. I ate another piece and gave another piece to Garth.
“That thing came from the ground,” said Paris.
“It’s good,” I said.
I ate more and more and finally threw it away when there were only little dirt-caked bits left. We rode on. “So good,” I said. “Can you believe it just comes up from the ground like that? Tasting like sugar. It was dirt and now it’s sugar you can eat and it’s good. Just takes sun and water and the dirt… is sugar. Isn’t that amazing?”
“I can’t believe you guys ate that thing right out of the ground,” said Paris. “That’s definite ghetto.”

Later on, we stopped for more food. Garth went into a boulangerie. Paris went into a green grocer’s. He emerged with, among other items, a cucumber.
“Look, guys. I got a cucumber. I’m just gonna put it in my basket, like, hey, look at me, I’m just riding around with a cucumber. Isn’t that so random?” he stated.
Soon after we were on our way again—in a relatively mountainous areas where some moments we had to stand and walk our bikes uphill arriving at a long downhill after which we could coast until the next uphill required our effort—Paris called out, “Guys! Guys! Come here.”
Paris showed us his odometer which read 99.98 kilometers. “Okay. Twenty more meters and we’ve biked one hundred kilometers.” In unison we walked with our bikes and when the digital readout finally marked 100.00 kilometers we all yelled out, “Woo hoo! One hundred kilometers!”
Woo woo! The joyful shouts died down and we got on our bikes and rode.

That night we hunted for a camping spot late, as the setting sun moved closer to its burial. We hunted around a small of six hundred or so with its church at the bottom of a hill and a handful of teenagers bored out of their minds, leaning out their windowsills, waiting. There was no kind stranger to offer shelter this night and we searched for space outside of town, in the fields. We found a gravel path, harmless as anything, leading to a farmer’s field and a forest beyond.
Paris was concerned that somebody would find us. The farmhouse was two hundred yards away. And who knows who might come down this road.
“First thing,” I said, “It’s already nearly 11pm on a Saturday night. I don’t know what farmer checks his fields at this hour, if he isn’t already asleep, and who would get up before seven on a Sunday morning to be sure there’s no trespassers on his property. We don’t got so many choices of where to pitch our tent.”
“Alright, well, I guess it’ll be okay.”
“So what do you guys think of this foresty area—the trees can hide us and all,” I said.
“What does that sign say?” said Paris.
He walked closer to examine a sign nailed to a tree.
“Guys, this is a hunting ground,” he said.
“Okay then. How about that other area we were looking at before,” I said.
We walked back down the trail a hundred yards and made our tents.
“Does anyone want to go see the sunset?” asked Paris.
“Sure,” I said. Garth stayed to brush her teeth.
Paris and I stood where the gravel trail meets the true road. We watched the dark blue consume the last of the red pinks on the horizon. I wanted to say something, but couldn’t think of anything to say. I resolved in my mind that if Paris sullied this sunset by saying it was gorge, I would allow him the freedom of his own self-expression. But he said nothing. After we turned back for the tents, I nodded my head and said, “Real nice.”

Settled in his tent, Paris called out to Garth and I in ours, “If you guys get scared or lonely, you can come sleep in my tent.”
“Alright,” we said.
I was already in the middle of taking off Garth’s panties.

Poem

Nerve
#####


To find a mate
on the website
nerve.com

you may confess
five things
you can't live without

Typically:
my coffee-maker
my day-planner
my iPod

I think honestly
about what I can't live without:
oxygen
water
and just enough luck
to get struck by lightning
every day.

Toilet Wisdom

St. Louis, MO. August 2, 2005. Blackthorn Pub

Monsoons in the Desert

You know, there's nothing like drinking a beer and watching a storm. I'll sit on my patio and scare myself with lighting. I don't know if I'm acting like a kid, but it's almost like watching a scary movie. I have my hands over my eyes and I'm just waiting for the next big bang. Simple pleasures, I guess.

Man, I love storms.

My best friend just had a kid. This is his girlfriend's first kid and the one they now share. His name Griffin Xavier Anderson. I find myself babysitting and changing diapers way more than a single guy should. I also made him a mix CD. The music is so wrong for a two week old kid, but then again, my father showed me all the Kubrik movies by the time I was 12. So may Iggy Pop and The Velvet Underground aren't so bad.

Is it time to grow up? I don't know. I don't think I could if I even tried.

Today in the news

Today in the news This is, after all, the 21st Century, so let's see what's going on in the wacky world of science technology. Unprecedented Shuttle Repair a Success This guy is wandering around in a spacesuit for six hours to remove two tiny pieces of ceramic tile filler that could destroy a machine worth untold millions and kill seven people. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. But the best part is "He did not have to use a makeshift hacksaw put together in orbit that he brought along just in case." I'm all for exploring the known universe and all, but should this thing really have carried these people into space? Aren't pre-launch repairs a bit easier to make? It's almost like NASA knew this was no big deal and is showboating on this whole McGuyver-type repair scheme. Brain-dead Virginia woman gives birth to girl The most amazing part is this isn't anything new: "Since 1979, there have been at least a dozen similar cases published in English medical literature, said Dr. Winston Campbell, director of maternal-fetal medicine at the University of Connecticut Health Center, which conducted research on the topic." Korean First to Successfully Clone a Dog But the dumbasses cloned an Afghan hound, "ranked by dog trainers as the least companionable and most indifferent among the hundreds of canine breeds." Which brings to mind: who would be the human equivalent? Regis? Zsa Zsa Gabor? Billy Bob Thornton? Lighting Strike Kills Utah Boy Scout Those guys haven't had much luck lately... All 309 Survive Toronto Jetliner Crash Amazing - 309 people walk out of a plane crash. And the quote of the day: From Astronaut Stephen Robinson: "It is a very nice orbital belly."