My mortal enemy, the taxi. Here lies an entire roost of them, dreaming of ways to foil me.

I will defeat them all one by one.

Today’s soundtrack: Summer is ready, when you are
Today at 12:02pm: walking, sweating, shooting



If I had an iPod-slash-cellphone that took pictures I’d be all set. I carry too much crap.

Plenty of shit is designed to “fit in your pocket” but when you start carrying three or four of these bitches they’re no longer so portable. Pockets all lumpy and whatnot. Lately I’ve had to resort to carrying a murse a/k/a man-purse, which my guy friends find risible.

I’m not materialistic, just experiencistic. (I know “experiencistic” isn’t a word, but blogs ain’t literature, so deal with it.) There’s objects I need to carry because of the experiences they give access to.

The iPod provides a constant soundtrack, which I often need to balance out sudden mood plunges. It’s amazing how you can feel bad, then dial up a couple tracks and boom, problem solved. It takes longer than popping a pill but there’s no side effects. I take my medication through the ears.

Then you’ve got the eyes. I need to carry the camera because I need to capture certain things in photographs. Mostly empty space of one sort or another, empty space in the city. It’s a compulsion, like I need to shoot it in order to solidify my identity or balance something out mentally. I don’t really understand it, I just do it. When the results come out pretty I put ‘em up here.

The cell phone I need because well, duh. As much as I value my Q-time in large doses, every once in a while you want to take meals with pals, and these days it seems like the only plans people can make are last-minute plans, hence the celly. I don’t know how people hung out in the 1940s.

Someone suggested I post a playlist. I can’t imagine any of you liking all of it--not because I’m a music snob, but because I have weird tastes--but I’ve been wrong before, so here it is:

(Editor’s Note: If you actually go to the trouble of acquiring any of these tracks, and you find you don’t like them, remember: Keep it to yourself.)

Today’s soundtrack: and wrinkle they faces like linen
Today at 12:02pm: ironing


I wanted to get out of town for the RNC, but it looks like I’m not gonna make it. I’m stuck here, which sucks. If Al-Qaeda hits town next week, you can go ahead and take me off your friend’s list, I won’t be updating. Because I’ll be DEAD. Is that what you want? (Sorry, practicing random misplaced guilt trips for when I’m a parent.)

Guess I’ll just stay here and write. Today I made good progress on my seems-like-I’ll-never-finish writing project. Well one day I’ll finish it, and sell it, and then I’ll be Rich. By that I mean I’ll change my name to Richard.

Saw Roger Dodger today. Have you seen it? It was recommended to me for the writing and it’s pretty decent. Campbell Scott plays a likable asshole, always tricky to pull off. I should know.

Jennifer Beals was in it too. After all these years, I still think she’s only a couple degrees cooler than the inside of the Sun. Damn she looks good.

For like the fourteenth time I almost killed myself last night with my own cooking. Forcing yourself to choke down your own meal even though it came out disgusting is a unique and challenging torture. It happens so often I’m getting tired of writing about it. So in addition to hiring a muse I need a cook and what the hell, I could use a maid too.

But I’m gonna treat them all really well. They’re going to be empowered servants. I’ll have a suggestion box in the bathroom where they can leave anonymous comments and I’ll pretend I can’t identify them by their handwriting.

If the cook wants to make something I don’t like I’ll pretend I love it, and I won’t enforce a dress code for the muse. She can even dress White Trash if she wants, like she’ll roll up in a day-glo T-shirt that says U CAN’T TOUCH THIS and her hair will be all fucked-up.

I don’t know why I just wrote that, it’s a lie. I can’t work with a muse like that. Honeydip better look like Jennifer Beals and be wearing some kind of absurd, Issey-Miyake-in-a-wind-tunnel type of thing. With shampoo-commercial hair and an intern following her around with a blower.

Today’s soundtrack: in the waiting line
Today at 12:45pm: sprinting through Grand Central like the fucking Flash


What a fucking day. It started at 5:51am and ended in front of some bar I wouldn’t go into. Tonight my life was like a cell phone on the subway: Zero bars.

I hate the west side of Manhattan, I think it’s stupid.

It’s hot, I’m sweaty and my bed is covered in a complete stranger’s baby oil. Long fucking story. Tell you about it tomorrow when I have more power cells.

And now, friends, I am going to imbibe the potion I’d so readily offer to countless strangers. That’s right, I’m going to go drink a nice, tall glass of shut the fuck up. Then I’m going to lie down and wait until I can’t see, hear or feel anything.

Tomorrow I won’t feel this way.

Today’s soundtrack: keep looking through the window pane
Today at 12:02pm: arguing politely with customer service


At first I thought Tommy got shot.

I’m whipping down Lafayette Street with Tommy Chops riding shotgun. Some asshole in a Lexus decides he’s going to take fifteen minutes to go from Canal to Walker so I route around him. Too late I see the cavernous pothole looming in front of the passenger side. I grit my teeth and brace, thinking maybe it won’t be that bad.

BLAM

A deafening blast goes off inside the car, somewhere to my right, coinciding with Tommy yelping and jerking to the left. The cabin immediately fills with white smoke.

Shocked, I snap my head to the right, looking for a gunman and instead seeing the side airbags have deployed. An acrid odor fills my nostrils.

I limp the car over to the side of the road, temporarily deaf in my right ear. All I hear is whistling; fucking eardrum feels blown out.

“You okay?” I scream.

“I think so,” Tommy yells back, taking the seatbelt off and examining his side. Turns out the side airbag hit him hard enough to bruise and break the skin. Can you fucking believe it?

Smoke drifts out of the cabin while I get out to see the damage. The front rim is fucking dented, its circular perimeter interrupted by an unsightly indentation, like a poorly-delivered pizza. From the impact of the pothole, both the front and rear wheelcovers have snapped off, leaving two brake-dust-black rims staring back at me like hollow eyesockets.

A passerby walks up to me and hands me one of the wheelcovers. The other one, cracked, is lying in the street.

Down on my hands and knees, I check out the suspension to see what’s fucked-up. Hard to get the angle but nothing seems blatantly out-of-place. Tommy and I get back in the car, but now the front seatbelt won’t work. (It becomes disabled after an impact, mandating replacement, in case it’s damaged.) He climbs into the back, holding his side and rubbing his ear.

Goddamn New York pothole! This thing was so big they should put a fucking fence around it and sell tickets to people who want to climb down into it. If this thing was in West Virginia miners would be getting trapped in this bitch.

I’m pissed all the way across the bridge. Ever get airbags replaced? Never mind the wheelcovers, this shit’ll set you back about a G. I was already in the hole, then I hit this one, now I’m deeper.

I continue on to Brooklyn, cursing.

I need Ctrl-Z in my real life.

Today’s soundtrack: love him, love him baby
Today at 12:32am: Shooting.


Things are up and down--in the past weeks, a few disasters and a miracle or two--but I suspect the future will be fantastic. Maybe I’m fooling myself, but if I am it’s one of my better ruses.

I can’t stop listening to Prince’s “Controversy.” The other night I was at OpenAir on St. Mark’s and Evil Dee spun “Controversy” bookended by a pair of Michael Jackson classics. The state of mind I was in at the bar came home with me like an unprincipled barfly and I’ve been on a Prince jag ever since. He says he could never take the place of your man, but he’s lying.

Collateral was good, I really liked it. L.A. is very alien to me but Michael Mann shoots it in a visual language I can understand. I love looking through the lens of someone with a profound grasp of cities and what’s great about them. Even better, most of the movie takes place at night.

Most of my movie takes place at night.

(I mean that metaphorically, you fool.)

Cut.

Today’s soundtrack: come on Daddy, face the future
Today at 2:17am: in my apartment, sweating



Why am I:

- down on my hands and knees scrubbing a secondhand off-white leather couch at 12:30am.

- drinking Red Stripe on a fire escape watching the cars slide past five stories below. The space was at the top of a five-storey walk-up so I earned this view.

- at a bar on Avenue A listening to thumping hip hop with no one to dance with. Tonight we’re a tricycle and I’m the third wheel, steering independently. California Kirk and his squeeze look happy so I shoot a

It’s like a frame from a French movie, no?
Oui.

- sitting in front of the keyboard staring at the monitor. I go to “File,” click “New,” and then...stare at the cursor blinking back at me. Keep blinking, you little bitch.

- scooping dried mangoes into a plastic bag at a “wholesome” grocery on Broome Street. Eating these throughout your day is a great way to make all your shit--cell, camera, Zippo--all kinds of sticky. At the end of the day when I’m wiping everything down, I feel like I’ve got a five-year-old son. The worst part is, it’s me.

- walking around and becoming obsessed with puddles.

- cooking the same dish every night, over and over again.

- staying up late for no good reason.


Fuck if I know. Why is the sky blue.

Today’s soundtrack: It’s a bitter pill, I swallow here
Today at 9:02pm: Getting a contact high. My weed-smoking neighbors threw a barbecue in the courtyard and I left the windows open.


How’s things.

Things ain’t easy but things ain’t bad. I could use a little more bread and a little more sugar but overall I can’t complain.

The writer Charlie LeDuff wrote “New York is a lot like a shit sandwich; the more bread you have, the less shit you taste.” I can’t come up with lines like that so I write everything else you see here.

As for the sugar, what’s worse than getting a taste of something you can’t have?

No taste at all, I suppose.

I’m amazed my taste buds still even work.

I don’t like feeling out-of-sorts. These days people take medicine to regulate their personalities but something tells me to stay away from that shit. The same something that prevents me from climbing the fence or stuffing the magazine in my bag or pinning the accelerator to the floor when the State Trooper riding your ass flips the gumballs on.

I got pulled over in Jersey, on the way to Toronto. The Trooper crept up to my car on the right side, SWAT-style with his hand on his gun and I didn’t like that one bit. I kept my hands on the steering wheel and my fantasies on the left side of my brain.

Betty baked me a pie for my birthday. It was great! I sent her an e-mail saying “Your pie is delicious” and I can only hope her live-in boyfriend doesn’t intercept it. He’s a black belt at our dojang so if things go awry there will be a sound ass-whipping in my future.

Lately I can’t get the writing to flow. So I am now accepting applications for muses. Applicant should be available 24 hours, able to make coffee and not above cleaning my kitchen. Ernest Hemingway said “The hardest thing about being a writer is cleaning out the refrigerator on the way to the typewriter.” A line like that, I might be able to come up with. What I can’t come up with is The Sun Also Rises.

I’m gonna go try and write now. That’s right, this was just a warm-up. Like doing scales.

I cleaned out the refrigerator last week. Did a shitty job.

Today is Day Ten, the final day of my train travels, and something is missing. I’m sitting on the Rocky Mountaineer as it chugs slowly through the breathtaking Canadian Rockies and wondering why I feel as empty as the seat next to me.

The last day of my trip turned out very opposite from the first, though both were on trains. From NYC to Chicago there wasn’t a damn thing to see, but I met some interesting people.

From Kamloops to Calgary there was plenty to see, but no one to talk to. Beautiful scenery but I’m all alone. I’d rather be watching this with someone else, even if it is somebody’s wife, or a girl with two ponytails who picks the damnedest moment to leave the room.

Sitting there snapping photos but something is nagging me. It’s not the typical my-trip-is-ending-tomorrow depression; it feels more like I was high on something for the past few days that I now suddenly, sharply lack. I need my fix and there ain’t a pusher in sight. Plus I’m not even sure what the drug was.

Maybe it was Pony-Twins. I’m fairly desperate for a human connection with an attractive female, someone with whom I can have a meaningful conversation, maybe trade some fluids. I’d like to think it wouldn’t be just rote fucking either, but most women seem to think it’s either love or slutdom, with no grey area in between.

I live in the grey area. I get grey mail, think grey thoughts, sleep on a grey bed. My mattress is already getting dented on just one side, a depressing occurrence.

The thing I don’t want to admit is that I need closeness. Want it, ain’t got it.

Almost everyone else on the train is loaded and over fifty, and I’m the only non-white, which I find kind of surprising. Rich European families trying to get a taste of the colonies. Senior citizens looking for the retirement thrills your golden years are supposed to afford you after a lifetime of labor. Me, dressed in a ratty T-shirt and jeans and looking confused.

I’m seated in the expensive seats--a mistake, in retrospect--and I try to make my way to the coach section in search of a kindred spirit. But they bar you from from accessing it! I guess they don’t want the classes mixing on this bad boy.

The Rocky Mountaineer is nice, in fact it’s so nice it actually makes me uncomfortable. I spend most of the time out of my seat and sitting in the open-air vestibules they’ve got at the end of each car. It’s exposed to the elements on two sides, so you can lean out of the side to feel the fresh breeze and/or have your head removed from your torso by an unforeseen tunnel entrance.

During the meals I’m seated with a perfectly pleasant elderly gentleman who’s unfortunately on the verge of senility, and his muscular, terse nephew Karl who speaks only in monosyllables. Karl reminds me much of Biff from “Back to the Future.”

“Alberta is really flat,” he said once, surprising me. “You can watch your dog run away for seven days.” I thought this a spectacular piece of wit, until I heard it repeated all ‘round the train by separate parties. I guess it’s an established saying up here, like “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere” or “Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt.”

You can’t smoke on this train, which got very difficult after the fifth hour. When the train stopped at Banff I snuck off to grab a quick smoke and the attendant caught me--she was pissed. I didn’t see what the big deal was, but smokers never do, which of course gives non-smokers more reason to dislike us. While I can’t feel your pain, I understand your hatred.

The truth is I made a bad decision and overpaid for this leg of the trip. I should have spent the dough on a spanking droptop and talked the stripper, Pony-Twins and the Japanese married woman into taking a little road trip through the mountains with me. I’m sure one of us would have come out dead on the other side, probably me, but I’d at least be able to generate some interesting material before they hurled my body over a precipice.

(Note: It’s not that the Rocky Mountaineer isn’t nice--it is nice--it’s just that it’s not for me, my tastes are too pedestrian.)

Story of my life: Starts off great, ends in an anticlimax.

At the end of each cowboy movie the protagonist rides off into the sunset, alone.

Here I am riding away from the sunset. I unwillingly got the alone part right, but I still can’t help feeling all of this is terribly backwards.

I’m not a cowboy. I’m a mixed-up writer/designer from New York and I’m sitting on the horse backwards, facing the ass-end.

Flight from Calgary to NYC, unremarkable. A layover in Detroit. I drove to Detroit one time in college. Ever been? Detroit makes Newark look like fucking Acapulco.

On this trip I’d met criminals, salt-of-the-Earth Americans, a married gal I’d unwittingly been at the same Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra concert with. Observed a sandwich-making player, watched two pillars of society get married, watched two ponytails walking away from me.

I’d made it from the Atlantic to the Pacific on nothing but rails. Spent three nights sleeping in a train, ridden a hydrofoil, a bus and a ferry, wound up mountain roads in a droptop. Spent money with pictures of a Queen on it. I was coming back with 1,000-plus photographs and minus one knife. A pocketful of e-mail addresses, half of which would lead somewhere, the other half, nowhere.

I get back to New York, hit the sidewalk at LaGuardia and the first thing I see is a bunch of taxi drivers having a screaming match. It’s nice when you can catch things just before the tipping point, just before they spill over into violence. Apparently one of them almost hit the other's car with his car so now they're pulled over, blocking traffic and there’s a black eye in somebody’s near future.

Mine are bloodshot as I wait in the taxi line. I’m ten days older, a grand in the hole but at least a month wiser. I figure it’s worth it. Now if one of these taxi drivers would hurry up and knock the other one out, then me and everyone else in this line can go home.

Train Trip Movie!

It’s a .mov file, about 15MB, with sound.
Music:
Ray Charles, “Swanee River Rock (Talkin' 'Bout That River)”
Clarence ‘Frogman’ Henry, “Ain’t Got No Home”

Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of the donors who made this trip possible!

Back on the rails.

A picture used to be worth a 1,000 words, but now the exchange rate is more like 1 PCT = 1,340 WDS. The Word is weak. Perhaps if the Dow/Tao goes up it will get stronger. Until then you’ll have to deal with a depreciation in the Words market.

The day started with a Class-A fuck-up for me and ended in marital bliss for two other people.

Suz, the bride (it’s short for Suzanna and as far as I know no one else calls her “Suz.” Like I’m gonna let that stop me) has deployed a friend to give me a lift to the wedding.

So here’s the thing. Moneygrip’s coming to pick me up at 10am. But today’s the day I check out of the Bosman and into the Riviera so I’ve gotta hustle. So I wake up, get dressed in a suit and tie, check out of the Bosman and start hightailing it over to the Riviera, hoping the check-in won’t take long.

The walk isn’t far at all, maybe 10-20 blocks, but I look at my cell and see it’s already 9:50am. It wouldn’t do to keep Suz’s friend waiting when the guy’s nice enough to go out of his way to pick my ass up. That and the fact that I’m starting to sweat in the suit convince me to take a cab.

I’ve bestowed nothing but platitudes on Vancouver, but let me tell you--what a lousy city to catch a fucking taxi in! I only saw three or four in the space of five minutes and they were all full. What kind of barbarism is this? In order to be useful, taxis have to be like superpowers: You may not use them all the time, but you should be able to summon them at a moment’s notice.

I finally managed to grab one in front of some hotel, and two minutes later I was at the Riviera.

“Oh, you’re Mr. Noe?” says the South Asian desk clerk, giving me the feeling I’ve done something bad. “Where were you yesterday?” he asks sharply, like I stood him up for a date.

“What do you mean?”

“We had you booked for two nights, starting last night.”

Aha! The guy at the Bosman fucked up, not me! I knew there was no way I’d book a $120/night room for two nights.

“Um, sorry. I think there was a mix-up,” I say.

“Well, since you didn’t show yesterday, we gave your room away. And you’ll have to pay a no-show fee.”

“What? But if you gave the room away, then it’s not like you lost out!”

“I’m sorry, it’s our policy.”

Jeez Louise. “Well, do you have another room available?”

“I am sorry, we are all booked. But the penthouse is available.”

“I don’t need a penthouse,” I said in a Jesus Christ, look at me tone.

“If you take it, I won’t charge you the no-show fee, which will be ninety dollars.”

“And how much is the penthouse?”

“Two-hundred and ten dollars a night.”

Jesus fucking Christ!

I turned around to walk out with my bags, then spied the clock. 10:10am. My ride would be here any minute.

I stepped back over to the counter, beaten. “I’ll take it.”

I didn’t have a chance to check out the “penthouse,” just threw my bags inside and headed back downstairs.

Waiting in front of the Riviera, I found that despite my efforts, I was still sweating. In a suit.

A few moments later an SUV pulled up. “How’s it going, I’m Kelvin,” said the cat behind the wheel. Clean-cut, upstanding-looking. He was the first in an extremely decent line of people I’d meet today.

I happened to be standing by the limo when the bride arrived--she looked soooooo happy! You should’ve seen her, it was like she was generating her own light. She’d planned the entire wedding, too.

The ceremony was short, sweet, and mostly in English, so I could follow along. The bride and groom both looked picture-perfect and everything went off without a hitch.

However, at the dinner last night I got to see a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the massive, massive logistics required in bringing something like this together. It’s fiendishly complicated. If the future Mrs. Noe is reading this, babe, we’re getting married in a T-shirt and jeans. Let’s do the City Hall thing, yeah? On the subway ride back, we can each put in one ear bud from the iPod and listen to “our song.”

Since the reception wasn’t until evening, Kelvin dropped me off back in the West End, and I walked around a bit before heading back to the hotel. Figured I may as well check out the “penthouse” since I'm paying for the damn thing.

It was, as I suspected, super-cheesy! Décor about ten years out-of-date and with a sad-looking, unstocked little bar. I pulled open one of the curtains to discover it was ripped. The bed was a king-sized.

It was also roomy, which is the last thing I need. When I travel I’m typically looking for a clean bed and maybe a TV, but I don’t care if the room’s the size of an elevator. I could have a party for twenty up in this bitch. Too bad I have no friends in Vancouver.

This room was costing me more than twice what I was supposed to pay, all because I’d failed to plan my trip in a detailed and organized fashion. If I had printouts of my itinerary I wouldn’t have made that mistake at the Bosman.

Depressed, I went out to find a Tim Horton’s, to drown my sorrows in coffee and donuts. There aren’t that many in Vancouver.

Back home people are always stopping me to ask me directions. Not sure why, I guess I look like I know where I’m going. Lately I’ve gotten in a habit of actually approaching people if I see them standing on a street corner with a map and looking befuddled. I’m volunteering directions at least every other day. I do it because it takes ten seconds, it’s no skin off my back and these poor bastards could use the help.

The strange thing is, this habit has come to Vancouver with me. I saw a girl standing on a corner with a map, and I actually started to approach her before realizing I still didn’t know my way around that well.

Stranger still, a Japanese girl stopped me on Davie Street to ask if I knew where the liquor store was, and I actually did. (I’d passed one after eating at Vu Le Vu and heading back to the Sylvia.)

Kelvin came by to pick me up in the evening and we headed out to the reception, about thirty minutes outside the city.

Everyone at this wedding seems to have known each other for a minimum of ten years. Me, the only person I know is the bride.

So here I am, seated at a table of strangers. Luckily I was seated next to a cute girl. And when she turned her head I saw she had not one, but two ponytails! Not pigtails on the sides (though I’m super into those also) but two rear-mounted ponytails. Awesome. I kept wishing a loud noise would come out of the kitchen so she’d glance over and I’d get another look. I thought about slipping the waiter a twenty to go in the kitchen and break some dishes.

The girl and I small-talked for a spell, and then she said “Okay I have a confession to make.” I figured she’d tell me she once ran somebody over on a dark country road and left him to die. People, especially strangers always seem to make random confessions to me. Once, at a party a girl I knew for about eleven minutes told me she’d been experimenting with lesbianism, but asked me not to tell anyone. (I told her I wouldn’t, but I lied because I just told all of you.)

“I was seated next to you on purpose,” Pony-twins continued. “Suzanna asked me to kind of talk to you and keep you company. She knew you didn’t know anyone here.”

How sweet of Suz! And how shitty for this poor girl! I felt a little bad, like she’d been assigned to babysit me. Still, Suz is sweet for thinking of me, and I could imagine worse “handlers.” I wanted to keep Pony-twins entertained but couldn’t think of any funny stories.

"On three, both of us should turn and
punch this photographer in the kidneys.
Ready? One...two...."

Over the course of the reception, a bunch of people close to the bride and groom got up to tell childhood stories about them. As these events unfolded it became clear to me I’d never been to a wedding like this in my life. This is complicated, let me try to explain it.

In New York, I feel like it's a constant struggle for my friends and I to just be decent human beings. I feel my first tendencies are almost always bad. Lam refers to it as “The ability to laugh when people fall.” The other day I was walking down the street with my friend Lil when some cat tripped and almost did a faceplant in front of us, and both of us couldn’t help it.

We’re not jaded or cynical because frankly, it’s too primitive for us. We’re well beyond it, into far darker shit. If you could hear some of the things that make us laugh you’d be appalled. I feel like my instincts are mercenary, my feelings callous, my relationships tenuous.

Anyways, so here I am this wedding and I realize, Holy shit, this is what Good people are like. Everyone around me is good, clean and decent. I’d always felt Canadians were a lot more earnest, which impressed me, but this wedding took the cake. Everyone here seemed a stand-up. No emphatic cursing or dark and mean-spirited jokes at another’s expense.

A friend of the groom’s got up to tell a story that particularly moved me. I can’t remember it line-for-line--I tried scribbling most of it in my notepad, but couldn’t get half of it--so I’ll paraphrase here.

“Charlie and I were on a camping trip, we must have been about eight years old. We were about to get into a boat on this lake when I realized I’d forgotten something back at the campsite.

“I went back to get it, taking a shortcut between these two trailers. What I didn’t realize was that between these two trailers was an angry pit-bull. I saw it and squealed in terror!

“I turned around and started running, scared out of my mind. The dog ran after me. Eventually he took up all the slack on his leash and was yanked to a stop, but by then I’d crashed into a table, fell over, hurt my leg and was crying.

“Then I saw that Charlie had been running towards me, and reached me just then. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked, and I saw he had something in his hands.

“‘What’s that you’re holding?’ I asked. He showed me and they were rocks. He’d grabbed a handful of rocks and was running over to defend me from the dog.”

These guys were eight when this happened. When I was eight I was running around my neighborhood in Staten Island with the other unenlightened kids, calling each other “faggot.” There wasn’t much in the way of rocks but we’d occasionally throw small pieces of broken cinderblock through the windows of abandoned houses. I remember shouting matches between angry fathers in the street. One time my friend’s dad slapped me for saying “‘A fangul.”

I found myself rather stunned by the dog and camping story. If I ever managed to raise a family, I would hope that they turned out like this. But if the apple truly doesn’t fall far from the tree, I guess I’ll be spending some time sorting things out down at the Principal’s office.

At points I looked over at Charlie and Suz’s parents and grew kind of quiet. How did they do it?

After the reception, Pony-twins offers to give me a little guided nighttime tour of the city. Killer! I figure she’s a safe bet, since she’s Suz’s friend and all, but as soon as we get in her car her voice changes.

“So, do you normally get in cars with strangers?” she asks, putting the whip in motion. “How do you know I’m not a psychopath?” For a second I had the thrilling sensation I was about to be stabbed.

“You normally pick ‘em up?” I ask.

“No,” she says.

“No,” I say.

She takes me down to the waterfront--or is it waterback, since there’s water on both sides of Vancouver--and we shoot some flicks with our digitals. She’s into photography too.

Then some night-driving, moving streetlamps, quiet city blocks. Pony-twins has got good taste in music, the soundtrack is ‘40s jazz standards. We get out periodically to shoot or stroll. An hour or two goes by and I get some decent flicks.

When she finally dropped me off back at my hotel, I gave her my knife. She opens it, looks at the blade, then closes it. Figure I can’t get it on the plane so I’ll come back for it at some point, maybe drive it across the border.

I’m in the penthouse, unable to sleep, lying diagonally on the still-made king-sized and listening to Radiohead while the sun comes up over Vancouver. In a few hours I’ll be getting on a train out of here, and soon after the trip will be over.

Also in a few hours Charlie and Suz will be getting on a plane to Hawaii and starting their new life! I’m really happy for them. I picture the lucky couple smiling, happy and exhausted from the wedding, while their plane cruises towards paradise.

Meanwhile I'm giving a small knife to some woman I just met. I suppose it’s a weird thing to give someone to hold onto.

I hope she doesn’t stab someone with it, since my fingerprints are all over it.

I had to return the whip early in the morning, a sad event. The attendant walked around the car to make sure I didn’t fuck it up, then gave me my receipt. Bye-bye five-liter eight. Thanks for not killing me.

Found a coin laundromat on Denman and washed my clothes, I think it was a buck-fifty per load.

In Canada’s stores, prices are generally cheaper. But in addition to the posted price the Canadians charge you something called G.S.T., which sounds like something you catch from sleeping with women who live near army bases.

Vancouver is not only multicultural, it’s handicap-friendly as well. You see lots of people cruising around on motorized wheelchairs, which I thought was pretty cool. I haven’t seen this many people without legs since the Mermaid Show at Sea World. It must be tough to make a city hospitable to the disabled but they seem to have made it work here. I admire that.

Broke one of my travel rules, which is: When going out of town, don’t eat the bagels, don’t eat the pizza.

Why? Simple. Let’s take chocolate. You know what chocolate tastes like, you’ve been eating it your whole life. Now let’s say you go to a foreign city and they give you a piece of chocolate. Only it’s not chocolate, it’s a piece of wood that’s been painted to look like chocolate.

You might bite into the thing to be polite, but inwardly you’re disgusted. Yet you look around and everyone else is cheerfully munching their wood, going “Isn’t this good? This is so good” because to them, this is chocolate.

I’ve been to a decent amount of places, and while some of ‘em had decent bagels--Montreal, if I remember correctly--no place had bagels better than the ones in New York. And I’ve been to exactly one place that better pizza: Italy.

But next to the laundromat on Denman was a pizzeria, and I was hungry, and it seemed an inexpensive way to fill the tank. So I got two slices for a few bucks and gritted my teeth.

Sat at a café and wrote a shitload of postcards, then brought the notebook up-to-date. It would be nice to come up to this city and write for a few months. I’m driving up to Toronto in early August to do just that. My friends back home make fun of me for liking Canada but I don’t care.

At the post office I tried to mail my knife back to myself in the ‘States.

“What are the contents?” asked the postal employee, an earnest-looking Asian woman.

“A knife,” I said. “Small one.”

“You can’t ship that,” she said, growing alarmed. “We received a memo. You can’t ship any knives.” She pointed towards a bulletin taped behind the counter.

“When they spot it on the x-ray, the inspector will just open it and throw it out,” she explained. She seemed like she actually cared, which impressed me. The knife went back in my bag.

Thought it might be funny if I came back with a disassembled assault rifle and tried to ship that, but those are great lengths to go to for a prank with divisive humor value.

When I was taking this photo, a friendly elderly gentleman
stopped and said "You know, it wasn't so long ago that this
was the tallest building in all of Vancouver."
Then I punched him in the kidneys.

Checking out a city on foot is definitely preferable to checking it out by car. You can see so much more on foot. On Robson I’m becoming mesmerized by women’s ponytails.

I thought about taking Vancouver’s mass transit, but I looked at the map and it didn’t seem to go anywhere I wanted to go. Again, I’ll have to save this for next time.

In the afternoon I returned to my hotel room to find an alarming sight: Five Latina maids were lined up outside of my room, waiting for something.

“Eso es el Chino que complain,” said one of them, looking away from me. I was surprised she said “complain” in English. I can understand if they thought I wouldn’t understand Spanish, but English?

“[Unintelligible] chinito,” one of them spat, softly.

I stopped in front of my door and looked at the first one. “Yo hablo espanol,” I said (though I couldn’t remember if it was “hablo” or “habla”). “Entiendo todos...y no soy ‘Chinito.’”

The bed had been made, indicating the maid(s) had been in my room. In the bathroom I looked at my toothbrush, certain it had been dipped in the toilet or worse. I ran it under hot water for a while before using it to brush my teeth.

The tub was still clogged, the lamp, still broken. Proof that complaining never gets you anywhere; all I’d succeeded in doing is incurring the wrath of a handful of hotel maids. I bet they took turns farting through my pillowcase.

I’m attending a wedding tomorrow, and today the bride and groom invited me to the groom’s parents’ place out in the ‘burbs for a pre-wedding dinner. My first time meeting the groom and he seems like a stand-up guy. Solid family too.

Afterwards they dropped me back off in the city, and I walked around taking flicks ‘til it got dark out. I can’t get over the 10pm sunset thing, it’s fucking amazing! Like having a 26-hour day.

Last stop of the night was a place called Vera’s Burgers on Davie Street. Next door was a bunch of kids on line waiting to get into a club. I remember that feeling.

The burger was good, and I spent a half-hour poring through some local paper. One of the columnists had printed an extensive anti-American diatribe, and the level of vitriol surprised me. Most of his gripes had to do with the American military but apparently he hated all Americans. A shame.

After I finished the burger I sat and sidewalk-watched for a while. It was well dark outside but the streets were still crowded.

Across the street was a bar filled with people having fun. Some people came, others left. Occasional couples strolling past. The club line next door got longer. Traffic passed in both directions. People on cell phones.

Next week all of these same things would be happening, but I wouldn’t be here.