On the Occassion of Sisyphus' First Book

Sunday, December 7, 2008, the premiere of my first book at the Urban Think! bookstore in downtown Orlando. 27 years of writing, and three years effort to arrive at this day. There's so much to say about why I had to publish, and why I fought to overcome every obstacle that presented itself:

On the Occassion of Sisyphus' First Book

I have studied every facet
of the boulder I have been pushing
as it rolled by underneath my straining brow
as it was fogged by my striving breath
as it spun below scrutinizing eyes
like the topographic map of my life:

This chink, the place where I lost control of the stone.
This polished surface was ground down by a gravel slope.
This side is where I learned to hold the boulder steadily,

When the effort defined my identity.


I became this boulder on this mountain.
I married the futility and became the task.

And over and over and over and over and over, again
the question was asked
how long can this last?

Eventually, I fell asleep pushing,

unconscious struggled under stone ,
dreams burgeoned shaking bones.

There are a thousand reasons every day
to not tell the truth,
what you feel, not to say
to chop down a cherry tree and
frame that little punk Washington . . .
to hide your wounds and words away.

In the end,
two endings:
to fail, surrender my effort, abandon my stone.
Or to understand what the pushing means, and push on.

The pushing has made me strong.
The hurt assures I know.
Having to tell you, has pruned my shame.
Writing it down means I grow.
The use of my youth, is now that
I loved you all with my truth.

Finally, I am not the boulder. I am the bolder.

Help Me I think I'm Fallin'

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then catch a load of these words:

The weekend before my foot surgery, I flew to Nashua, New Hampshire to visit my friends Joy and Dave. I communed with mother nature just following the peak of autumn color.

Best recommendation is to visit The Cheese Shoppe in Concord, Massachusettes. It is Mecca for all things tastey, cheesey, and winey (like me - a Winey Weinbrenner). Hope the pictures inspire. This must suffice for now.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends and family, Drew.

Why Niagara Rhymes with Viagara

Work ordered me to Hamilton, Ontario. Hamilton is a small city in the North America rust belt half way between Buffalo, New York and Toronto, Ontario. It has a lovely setting on a ridge overlooking Lake Ontario, but let's face it - a hundred years of industrial development followed by 20 years of recession can spoil even the loveliest of places. Despite the smokestacks and weedy sidewalks, lower Ontario is lovely. The vineyards East of Hamilton lead up the ridge to tidy white barns and silos set on broad green pastures. If someone discovers what to do with cracked sidewalks and telephone poles, Hamilton will be rich beyond their dreams. Until then, it needs a coat of paint and an economic renaissance.

On the way from Buffalo (who has a lovely little airport), I drove by Niagara falls. Beautiful. Powerful. Moving. Whomever declared the Canadian side prettier than the American side, has not been to the American side recently. Prospect Point, Goat Island and Luna Island all provide breathtaking views of the falls just as the Niagara river pours over the brink. The Canadian side seems far more developed with towers, hotels, and urban structures. In any event, the falls are lovely and worth a visit if you're in the region. Pictures soon.

Prague Hates Me (and the Feeling is Mutual)

In the spectrum of touristic paranoia, I rate pretty high. I'm suspicious of cloaked figures in dark alleys (I don't care if he *was* a puppeteer!), and avoid speculative investment in famous bridge infrastructure. In short, I may have just fallen off the apple cart, but I'm armed (if only with apples).
But my Thursday in Prague chaps my hide like a sandpaper thong attached to a jackhammer in an earthquake zone.
Upon arrival at the Prague h.nh. train station, my mother was seized by the need to have an apple turnover and a peach iced tea. I should mention also, that this main train station is under construction . . . and all normal signage is obscured by scaffolding, plastic, and graffitti (immer!).
To be a complete drama queen, I should also, also, mention that I am carrying six weeks of clothes in a suitcase that is so heavy, the wheels keep popping off. -- Can you feel my pain yet?
So I'm off my game, I'm chasing my Mom with my bag, a laptop computer and my carry-on. After she got her turnover, sated, she relented to finding a taxi. This took nearly 20 minutes, and when we finally found the taxi queue, there were no taxi's there. We waited another ten minutes . . . until two cars finally came into the queue. The first was a black station wagon marked "Transport Vehicle", the second a conventional taxi cab.
I had been warned about Prague taxi drivers (See also thieves and crooks). So I avoided the unmarked car and went for the taxi. The taxi driver, second in line, said that no, I had to go in the unmarked car ahead of him. Nearby there were two policemen. I (stupidly) assumed that if two policemen, and another taxi driver would have no reason to refer a tourist to an unsafe situation. I would be wrong. But I would also be tired, and distracted.
To make a long story short - we paid 980 for a taxi ride that shoul have cost 300 Krones. There is drama and comedy in the story . . . as we should have suspected we were being robbed, when between the two of us, we did not have enough money to pay the scam fare.
Upon entering the hotel, we were told we had no reservation (but they took us in anyway).
Now without any cash, in a foreign city, we went to change our traveler's checks. (You will have to read my separate rant: American Express is worthless.) The American Express bureau moot, we went to a bank, that refused to change money for us. Finally we ended up at a tourism rip-off Bureau de Change paying an exhorbatant rate on top of the worst Exchange rate in the last 30 years.
Today, we went to see Prague Castle. It is a government run attraction and national icon. Entrance to the compound is free, as is entrance to the Cathedral. But to see the palace the art galleries and the other chapels on premise . . . $50. This does not include the cost of the audio-guide in English . . . ANOTHER $50.
So, I'm standing there blinking - just having lost $100 to see a castle . . . only to discover that the palace is empty - no furniture, no decor - empty rooms. And that the audio tour does not explain the art, and function of most of the compound. Rooms were closed, and facades were covered during restoration . . . So, I'm standing there blinking - realizing that I did not pay $100 to see Versaille, or Vaux Le Vicompte, Chambord, the Forbidden City, the Tower of London, Neuschwanstein, the Vanderbilt Mansion . . . etc. And they were all in mint condition!!
We all know what it is to pay too much for something. We all go to the movie theatre and complain about a cola that costs $4, and a hot dog that costs $8. Imagine if everywhere you went, everything was priced ridiculously expensive. If you were asked to pay $7 for a glass of water, or if the ketchup and butter that was brought to your table cost $2 each on your bill.
If you can imagine this, then you will begin to understand what it is to get by in Prague. Everything everywhere is competing to be the most expensive, instead of the least. Every bureau de Change is coordinated to worsen your exchange rate. And there is no alternative, except to not change money, not to shop, not to eat. In the end Prague loses, because their customers decide to spend less and leave earlier.
What are the Praguites thinking? Karlovy Vary and Cesky Krumlov made such a beautiful and positive impressions . . . it's not the Czech people. There is some evil afoot in Prague that is punishing English speakers for being here.
I'm here to convey the message loud and clear. No matter how beautiful the gothic spires are . . . do not bother coming to Prague unless you just want to burn money on C-quality attractions.
Sad but true. Someone has stolen the soul of the Czech Nation . . . working in the name of Western Capitalism.

I'm in Love - Cesky Krumlov!

Few Americans are aware of the small Bohemian village of Cesky Krumlov. It lies southwest of the larger Czech city of Cesky Budejovice, on the Austrian border. The town is a jewel of red tile roofs on a strategic series of oxbows in the Vltava river . . . the waters of which wend their way to Prague from here. Cesky Krumlov has been tremendously preserved, thanks to a 19th century celebration of design called Historism. This aesthetic followed the Roccoco, and was a conscious attempt to integrate design elements of the classical, medieval, renaissance, baroque, and roccoco. The end result is that all of these periods are represented in the buildings, towers, steeples, public squares and castle interiors. Wandering about this Czech town is like playing in a time machine. Krumlov features the second largest castle in the Czech Republic (after Prague) and has been declared a UNESCO world heritage site (second to Venice). In addition, you can raft down the river in inflatable canoes, hike in the grassy hills, or just sit in the mountain air and dine on the delicacies of Italy, Austria, Hungary, Germany, Bohemian, Monrovian, and of course American cuisine. Normally, I would keep a secret like this to myself, but the secret is out. All of Europe visits here, and the Czechs can use the tourism income to preserve the area. So on a hot summer day, this perfect setting is populated by sneaker wearing, tank top sweating, ice cream cone weilding tourists instead of the beautifully costumed aristocracy that watched over this land.
Hotels are numerous, but I can personally recommend, Pension Barbikan Room 6.

European Toilets Stink

A word about the noble toilet, before I continue with my travel blog:
American toilets are wonderful. Good ones are comfortable. They come in custom colors and sizes . . . and some do not even look like toilets.
My favorite thing about American toilets are that they are not very interactive. My plan for a toilet is to arrive, poop and leave. That's it. When I'm done with a toilet, I want to flush and go. I have discovered that American toilets feature superior shape, volume, and water placement. Allow me to explain in graphic detail. (You have been warned.)
Europeans design their toilets so that you have to become involved with their function, collective use, and upkeep. In short, you will have an ongoing relationship with the toilet. You cannot arrive, poop and leave.
First you must mount the toilet, typically in a tiny room too small to enter, turn around and close the door. It appears as though the toilets are installed in these rooms first, then the walls are built.
Secondly, you poop. This part I'm sure you've got (. . . except for those pesky two-year olds who keep leaving comments about their binky. You kids go to bed already!).
Third, you flush. But similar to the paper-plastic connundrum faced in grocery stores everywhere, you must choose the size of your flush in Germany. Little Flush, or BIG FLUSH. There are consequences for the entire planet . . . whatever your selection. If you choose little flush, and you fail to rid the world of your dark matter, you must decide yet again, if what remains is worth a little flush . . . or if you are tired of gambling with the fate of the world, you can just go for a BIG FLUSH, knowing that you did your best . . . but you cannot risk the careless wantoness of yet a third flush.
But wait there's more. Now you must begin to touch the toilet. You must lift the seat, and pick up the toilet wand used by the thousand toileteers before you. You must wand the toilet clean, and scrub if necessary those highly adhesive bits that you've cast off.
Fifth, you must then flush again, with the wand . . . so it is cleaned and you can put it back.
You may now touch the toilet lid again, to close it.
Now you may leave.
Why is this elaborate ceremony needed? Because the toilet is shaped like a funnel. Deep. All-wall. Very little water. One supposes that the Europeans are more water conscious . . . except with every flush a firehose of water is propelled through the funnel.
In the Aral Gas Station in Mulheim An Der Ruhr, the Men's room toilet, has no water . . . but a ceramic tray to catch all the steamy goodness left there. This is a truly interactive toilet. Smell-o-vision. When you flush there is a 50-50 chance that your little friend may be ejected out of the bowl into the room with you. "Say Jello to my Littol Freend!" indeed.
I would go on, but let's not exaggerate. German toilets are different . . . but they are not the worst. The worst, can be found at the mountaintop Drak Yerpa Caves in Tibet. A brick pit teetering on a hillside 14,000 feet in the air. Alien beings come there to die. I have faced these organisms head on (as I could not bring myself to contribute) and survived to tell the tale.
Germany is not this. But why, I ask you, are the people who make Mercedes and BMWs designing their sewer system in this way?
One positive aspect of this system, is that the Germans have clean restrooms. Everyone is required to participate in the cleaning of the toilets . . . or suffer the suspicions of co-workers and fellow toileteers. Talk about your collective guilt!
Frequently, . . . heck Typically! Most establishments charge to use the bathroom. You cannot even get in, unless you've got cash (30 - 50 cents). Some have monitors and janitors on stand-by (why I don't know, when you are expected to participate in the bathroom's cleaning). I have been victimized by just such a janitor in Plzen, Czech Republic. When she demanded 5 krone from me, I gave 50 (stupidly) . . . and got no change. This means that I paid about 3.50 to pee in a train stain that was in the process of being cleaned by a lady janitor. The gaul! For $3.50 I should have been able to decorate a golden brick in a Bohemian Palace!! I have complained about this shakedown ad nauseum . . . and my family has told me to "Let it Go!" . . . That's what lead me to their clutches, I tell you!!! Anyway . . .
In the Block House Restaurant on Adenauerplatz . . . the toilet actually has a bleach dispenser with graphics on how to clean the water closet after yourself. I mean it's one thing to tidy up . . . but the graphics explain how to use toilet paper to spread the bleach over the entire toilet and then wipe it off. Is this my job as a guest? I think not!
Pictures will *not* be provided . . . so move on to the next blog yous!

You Know You're Old When

I spent the week working in beautiful Mulheim an der Ruhr, a river-town in Western Germany between Dusseldorf and Essen. It is lovely, peaceful . . . and a great place to relax. I stayed at the very nice Hotel Am Ruhrufer, but more importantly ate every night at their amazing Thai Restaurant!


However, one morning while I was getting a pot of hot tea at the hotel breakfast buffet, a Swiss man moved my food, setting, computer and what not to another table . . . because he wanted to sit where I was. I thought for ten seconds about whether this was a misunderstanding . . . that perhaps there is another way to indicate that the table is occupied, besides having all of one's things at it . . . or whether the man was perhaps mentally ill. I don't think either was the case. I think this was just a pushy guy. Freakish. Anyway, here is a pastoral view of the Ruhr river from the dam where his body would be burried, if in fact there was a body, which there isn't.

You Know You're Old When

You know you're old when, you go to the Love Parade . . . (the German underage drinking, smoking, and can't tell you if you don't already know festival) . . . and you want to send a million people to their room (with a plastic bucket and a mop).
But allow me to explain in graphic detail:
I'm working 20 minutes from where the Love Parade is scheduled to take place. I recall the Mandy Moore film, Chasing Liberty, and I think about how cool it would be to say that I too have been to the Love Parade.
Despite not having a lover, I am a "Lover." I love. Ich liebe dich. I could parade my love around. I support Love (but sadly the relationship is not reciprocal - Love mostly sits on my couch and watches TV with his hand in his pants . . . but I digress).
But I'm torn. My issue is that this same weekend, I want to visit my family/friends on the Belgian Shore. I must either choose between seeing a once in a lifetime sexually charged cultural experience . . . or domestic tranquility with a family that I see once every five years - who has a new baby.
I decide that the optimal course is to do both: Yes, take the baby to the Love Parade.
No, no. I mean go to the Love Parade, but leave early and drive to Belgium in a rental car.
This plan however is an exercise in logistics:
I try to rent a compact car. They have no compact cars left, so they give me, for the compact car price, a brand new Mercedes Benz. I'm not joking. A brand new silver Mercedes with black leather interior.
Then I realize that I have to drive this expensive luxury car through the Love Parade to some unknown parking plaza for a million people. The hotel concierge admonishes me to take the train, and leave the car in the local station parkingplotz. "It will be safe there, and when you return, you can leave for Belgium."
So, I go by train, and materialize at the Dortmund HauptBahnhof.
There is a 20 minute pilgrimage with a million other people to the highway in front of the sports arena. Everyone is dressed excentrically (a shabby effort compared to the average pride parade). It looked more like a Hookers and Vickers party. All the young ladies were dressed in fishnet and heels, and the young men . . . were wearing the last five drinks they had imbibed.
I literally saw some poor African family, dressed-up for travel, emerge from the train station in the midst of this carnival. They, clearly conservative, were confused and appalled by their circumstance. As they pondered the scene, a 16 year old rained his small intestine over their luggage.
(I hope you're not eating as you read this.)

Anyway, so a million German youths show up early to the Love Parade (The Germans are nothing if not punctual). We have a two hour wait. There are food boths and souvenir stands . . . most are empty. The young people pose an elbow insert a cigarette and light up. For the next hour 1 million teenagers smoke like crack junkies in fishnets.

I wish I could get my hands on the bastard that sold 30% of the drunken youths whistles. Not party whistles. Not new years day musical whistles. He has sold them coach Baker's "Give me 50, with a smile Weinbrenner" whistles. So the second-hand smoking is enhanced with the continuous din of 15,000 drunken peeling whistles.

The hot smoke and the noise disstabilizes the atmosphere. It begins to rain torrentially on one million German teenagers who are hunched over cigarettes, deafened by whistles. There were four people with umbrellas. I was one of them. 100 people tried to stand with me under my small umbrella. It was not Love, but it *was* intimacy. Others used garbage bags and jackets to augment my "regenschirm." Soon I was the center ring of the Barnum and Baily's Irish Cream Circus.

The rain stopped. The music began. Thumping. Hooting. A roar from the crowd. Then it went off. No music.

The music began. Thumping. Hooting. A roar from the crowd. Then it went off. No music again. The Love Parade was in fact teasing one million sopping wet, deaf, emphysema victims with nothing to defend themselves but whistles.

A third time, the Love Parade began. Thumping so loud that the whistlers never knew what hit them. They could whistle their brains out, but, only, between, the, huge, deep, base, rattling, every, tooth, in, their, drunken, little, heads . . . .

I (old, wet, and sober) decided the writing was on the wall. The crowd was shoulder to shoulder for 30 acres. Now was the time to get, while the getting was good. I would buy an electronic CD later, and re-experience the event in the privacy of my luxury Mercedes. Did I mention that it was a MERCEDES!

I pressed my way back through the crowd, like a ornery salmon swimming upstream in a river of beer with an expensive camera (mixed metaphors, ay?). The torrent of people never ended. The crowd was contiguous back to the train station. As it was already packed at the Love Parade, I could not imagine what the next million people were going to do when they arrived. I didn't stay to find out.

I rushed to catch the train back to the Mercedes.

Halfway between Essen and Dortmund, a torrential rainstorm soaked the German landscape. I, snug, in my commuter train felt I'd made a good decision in leaving. Then the train came to a stop. An unintelligible voice garbled over the loudspeaker. I asked someone near me if they understood. They did.

Apparently, Love Parade Hooligans had gotten into a fistacuffs with the Engineer of the train currently in the Essen Station. As a result the Polizei had arrived to arrest the thugs and take the Engineer to the hospital (krankhouse - still cracks me up to say that - - because it makes me think that this is where all the krank calls in the world come from . . .).

The Hooligan train was blocking Essen station. All it's passengers had decided to quit the train and walk on the rails in the pouring rain to Dortmund . . . so all trains had been ordered stopped until the tracks could be verified as clear.

In short, I sat in a stopped train for three hours!! I was frosted. Stupid Love Parade. Stupid Concierge. Stupid Hooligans. Stupid Rainstorm . . . etc.

In the end the train commenced movement, to another town . . . where a very nice girl from Albania invited me to join her in her friend's car, who was coming to pick her up. This I did. Bless that young woman!

I was off like a dart to Belgium - three hours late!

On the way to Belgium, I came upon a Smart Car going 140 Km/Hr (See also "Nuclear-Powered Golf Cart") . I passed it of course, if only to preserve my self-esteem. I mean one cannot allow a golf cart to blow one's doors off - no matter how fast it is going. I seriously thought about throwing an ice cube from my new silver luxury Mercedes at the Smart Car, but realized that the ice cube would knock the Smart Car over and it would explode and kill everyone inside (the ice cube being equal in mass to the Smart Car).

I thought to myself, if I were in a Smart Car and it was going 140 - there would be screaming. Even if I were driving. This is tantamount to hurtling off a cliff on a lawnmower. Screaming is entirely appropriate.

But suffice to say, I got to Belgium . . . where the next Blog entry will begin.