Meanwhile

Are Friends Electric?

Good Photo

This is a good photo of Chris C. in Croatia.

-- Aaron | Sep. 5, 2008 | Link | Friends (1)

Berlin Arrival

Flew to Berlin from Ljubljana yesterday morning ...

... And was picked up at the airport by our beloved Joe and Tom.

We've had a nice time so far on this leg of the trip.

Yesterday, we got settled in our temporary apartment. Imagine four guys, eight suitcases and assorted gay holiday accountrements ... the place looked like a bomb went off about a minute after we started unpacking. We had a nice lunch at Cafe Berio, where we were spotted by a Joe, My God fan. Walked around the gayborhood a bit, had a beer and then enjoyed a nice dinner at one of the cafes here on Viktoria-Luise-Platz by the apartment.

Stayed out pretty late into the night, having visited the legendary Mutschmann's and other places around. Bars here are not horrible, but ... my God ... the crowds. It's a special event weekend here in Berlin and there are simply too many people. Too many.

-- Aaron | Sep. 5, 2008 | Link | Friends (2)

Whirlwind

Whirlwind of activity now as I prepare to go to Berlin tomorrow morning. Posting might lapse again. Will definitely return for photos at the weekend or Monday.

-- Aaron | Sep. 3, 2008 | Link | Friends (1)

Ungh

Can't find memory card to post latest round of vacation photos.

This could be bad.

On the bright side, Chris C. and I returned in one piece from the Balkan part of our vacation. We danced on the beach, ate Ćevapčići and ajvar and swam in the sea. Chris is horribly sunburned. I am not. (See Jheri curl post below.).

We are in Ljubljana now, staying with some friends before going on to Berlin. We spent last night walking around the Old Town here and visiting with folks. Today, we went up into the Alps and hiked around.

So far, we've traveled by plane, by train, by ferry, by bus and by car.

Long vacation.

Pray for my photos.

-- Aaron | Sep. 2, 2008 | Link | Friends (2)

On Tour

I think we're going to be out of e-mail range for the next couple of days. But I'll try to be back posting on Monday.

-- Aaron | Aug. 27, 2008 | Link | Friends (1)

Venice, Part 2

We had a couple of very beautiful days, wandering and Venice, sightseeing.

Just really nice.

-- Aaron | Aug. 27, 2008 | Link | Friends (2)

Padova

Chris C. and I are staying on the mainland in Padova.

Pretty town.

We're mostly staying here because it is so much cheaper than staying in Venice proper. But Padova also has some nightlife and gay-oriented entertainment, including the notorious Sauna Metrò, which we sadly virtuously did not visit.

We did go to a bar called Hot Dog. Unfortunately, we did not know when we arrived that it was a so-called "underwear night" -- the theme was actually "Naked or Underwear" -- which presented us with an interesting dilemma.

Chris, fortunately enough, was wearing a pair of sporty, square-cropped briefs that might, under other circumstances have doubled as swim trunks. So, he quickly shed his jeans and began prancing around the premises like a leprechaun. I, however, was wearing an "older" (yet scrupulously clean!) pair of black Calvin Klein briefs with an exhausted elastic waistband.

Uh-oh.

After relunctantly removing my pantaloons in the impromptu dressing area of the bar, I stood in front of the mirror and examined myself en lingerie. Not good. In fact, so not good that I briefly wept bitter, bitter tears, so much feared I the humiliation forthcoming.

My choices were 1) to hike the briefs up half-way around my stomach so that they "stayed up," yet emphasized dramatically what seemed to be a male "camel toe," or 2) let them ride low around my hips, giving the appearance that I was wearing a ... well ... adult diaper of some sort.

I chose option number two.

And so, I spent the night looking like a contestant in the 2008 Mr. Padova Hot Dog Baggy Underwear Contest.

As you can imagine, I received little (positive) attention from others at the bar.

Padova was not all bad, however. Chris and I got a chance to check out the cathedral baptistry, which was covered from floor to ceiling in spectacular frescos. We also visited Il Santo, the basilica church where St. Anthony is buried, and various and sundry other sights.

-- Aaron | Aug. 27, 2008 | Link | Friends (4)

Venice

And then we came to Venice.

Beautiful.

-- Aaron | Aug. 27, 2008 | Link | Friends (0)

Verona

Spent yesterday in Verona.

For those of you who are keeping track, note that I left Chris C. back in Munich for a couple of days while I descended into Italy. Chris had never been to Munich before, while I have been many times, so we decided to split up and then re-unite after a couple of days.

Most interesting moment so far, traveling with Chris:

In the restaurant in Munich, the waiter crossed the room to greet us at our table, but instead of taking our order, he said, "Entschuldigung," and then proceeded to remove a giant piece of dandruff from the top of Chris's head.

True freaking story.

"Mein Gott! I screamed. "What are you doing?!"

The waiter paused, giant piece of dandruff in hand. Chris calmed me with "a look" and then the two of them began laughing and grooming each other like orangutans. I cowered in embarrassment behind my menu and spent most of the meal praying to be struck dead and taken by the Lord.

Anyway ... Verona.

I suspected that, as soon as I came down out of the mountains, I would find myself bathed in intense Italian sunshine. Yep. Stunning blue sky, eight-five degrees, air clear and dry ... and not an inch of shade or drop of water to be found.

I had prepared myself for the day with a heavy coating of SPF 30 sunscreen oil, enough of it that I could amuse myself by making Jheri curls in my arm hair on the train ride to Verona. This turned out to be a good idea.

Verona was hot -- but satisfyingly so. I had a very tasty pizza and a glass of wine on the Piazza Brà and then walked around the town. Oddly enough, near the Piazza delle Erbe, I saw two households, both alike in dignity ...

Other sites of interest:

An immense Roman arena in rose-colored marble, similar perhaps to the Coliseum, where the Opera society of the city of Verona performs a summer music festival. (Stage sets and props, obviously for Aïda, were in a staging area outside.) The Cathedral. A complex of municipal buildings in the center of the city, dating from Medieval times. The fortified gates and towers of the old city walls. The red brick Castelvecchio, a fortress of the Scaligeri.

And -- my favorite -- the church of Sen Fermo. San Fermo consists of two chapels, one on top of the other, the one below in the Romanesque style and the one above, Gothic. The roof of the Gothic chapel was all wood, carved in imitation of the hull of a ship and painted with portraits of over 200 saints, martyrs and beati.

Just cool stuff.

And despite the heat and sun, I survived without getting burned anywhere.

-- Aaron | Aug. 25, 2008 | Link | Friends (3)

Bolzano, Part 2

Later in the day, however, Bolzano was briefly redeemed to me.

First, I ate a late lunch in town in a restaurant that distinguished itself by serving what could only be called "Italy's worst pizza," accompanied by a glass of wine that tasted like rusty nails soaked in water.

I had wanted to sit in an authentic Tyrolean restaurant, where I could eat ... you know, roasted pork knucklebones or a breaded veal cutlet or some sausage and a strudel. But I couldn't find one. I couldn't find a single restaurant in the entire capital of the South Tyrol that served local food. So, I ate "wherever," which, as you know, is always a bad idea when you are on vacation.

After the lunch, I decided that I had had enough of it all and, literally, headed for the hills. I walked along the river in the direction of the mountains that surround that miserable city like a prison wall, hoping to put as much distance as possible between Bolzano and me.

Eventually I found myself in a lovely expanse of countryside, where the ground was carpeted by endless fields of grape vines, heavy with fruit.

On one hillside was a waterfall, near a ruined tower.

Nearby, I found a castle among the vines.

"Hmm," I said to myself. "Maybe Bolzano isn't all horrible after all."

Because the castle and the grapes and the waterfall and the ruined tower and the river and the smell of the countryside were, really, beautiful.

But then when I got back to the hotel later, the Kroatisch girl who worked at the counter tried to cheat me out of three euros when I asked for the password for the hotel wireless. (Internet access in the hotel was free. She intended simply to pocket the money.) This pushed me over the edge. "You are a thief!" I shouted in her Gypsy language and then I ran out of the hotel lobby and gave up for the day and went to bed, even though it was barely evening.

-- Aaron | Aug. 24, 2008 | Link | Friends (4)

Bolzano

Arrived in Bolzano yesterday.

It rained and it felt like, wherever I went, people turned their backs on me.

Horrible travel day where the weather destroyed everything.

This is the Austrian and Italian border country. Bolzano itself makes a concession to geography by combining, in an irritating manner, German and Italian speech into a single, incomprehensible language that renders the city almost impossible to navigate. The main town square is called, in signs, the Piazza Walther Platz. Your hotel could be the Stadt Hotel Città. At a restaurant, you are greeted with, "Buon-giorno-grüss-Gott," as if it were a single word, giving you not a single clue what the proper reply might be.

And no, I did not see Ötzi, either. I found the photo in the Wikipedia article to be too disturbing.

-- Aaron | Aug. 24, 2008 | Link | Friends (2)

Munich

Arrived in Munich yesterday ...

Pretty day.

Sort of a half day, with not a lot of time to do much except to quickly look around.

In the afternoon, I went to the Alte Pinakothek, which is one of the premier museums of painting in Germany. They have a big collection of Rubens and a smaller collection of Rembrandts. It is probably best known for its collection of Dürers, among which is this masterpiece, a Christ-like self-portrait painted when he was a mere 28-years old.

But guess which wing of the museum was closed for renovation?

I left disappointed.

Chris C. arrived in the evening. After he got set up, we ate some spätzle and various meat products for dinner and then went out and amused ourselves at the local Munich version of The Eagle, a tiny bar that seemed about 12 feet by 12 feet in size.

I asked a local guy at The Eagle if there were any "hot guys" in Bavaria. He said that there were only a few and that this presented a problem for the local community, because there were "not enough to go around!"

-- Aaron | Aug. 23, 2008 | Link | Friends (0)

Beard

It's back.

I'm going traveling in Europe in three and a half weeks. Not sure if it should stay or go. Feedback on the beard last year in Ljubljana and Berlin was very negative. Especially Berlin. I'm presuming that Munich is more beard-friendly, just because Bavarians are generally more jolly. And what says "jolly" better than a beard?

-- Aaron | Jul. 29, 2008 | Link | Friends (32)

Mistaken Identities

We actually believed Tony and Chris to be two slender, elderly Quentin Crisps -- in white hair perhaps tinted a pale lavender -- living in an Uptown apartment full of fake Ming vases, Louis XIV furniture and, yes, a tiny, fussy dog. I personally imagined Tony offering me a sherry in a fake English accent in the salon of the apartment, while Chris, frail and transparent, blinked silently in the background in a dressing robe and ascot, with large, watery eyes.

This did not turn out to be the case.

It's funny how people can "come across" on the Internet, or even in life.

And it's funny how much we bring our own interpretations to these things.

-- Aaron | Jul. 23, 2008 | Link | Friends (5)

Utorak

I kind of have a thing for schlocky European pop music.

Bad audio quality, but Petar Grašo undeniably hot.

I subjected Mark and Joe to the musical stylings of my beloved Eros Ramazzotti on Sunday at The Dugout. They were not amused.

But to each his own taste.

-- Aaron | Jul. 22, 2008 | Link | Friends (3)

Joan Collins

Yesterday evening, I happened to be Googling the phrase "Jon-Erik Hexum" and I came upon this video redaction of an old film.

Cute stuff.

-- Aaron | Jul. 18, 2008 | Link | Friends (5)

Color Commentary

Eric e-mailed me this piece earlier today, following up on a conversation that we had Tuesday night at Nowhere Bar. I strongly recommend the new Tuesday evening party at Nowhere, with your host Damian (NSFW), by the way ...

I sent back the following remarks as a response to Eric's e-mail and it sort of fleshes out what we were talking about:

I'll have some more comments later.

-- Aaron | Jul. 17, 2008 | Link | Friends (4)

More Eros

Embedding of this video has been disabled, but I would like you to watch it. And I challenge any one of you to demonstrate that part of the "meaning of life" does not include Eros Ramazzotti.

-- Aaron | Jul. 15, 2008 | Link | Friends (5)

Children Are the True Meaning of Life

I read today on a blog that perhaps children, one's own children are the true meaning of life.

Do children bring meaning into a person's life?

Does a human life have only one meaning, children?

Can different people's lives have different meanings?

Can the meaning of life change over time?

I know that having one's own children is supposed to be fabulous and everything. But if this is so, why do so many people with children have lives that are empty and meaningless? I suppose that a majority of American adults eventually have at least one child during their lives. Can we say that the same number of adults have lives that are happy -- or if not, at least meaningful?

Maybe the meaning of life is that a person's life can been meaningful in a million different ways that are always changing and that you never know until you get there.

I have a feeling that life for everyone is mysterious, joyful, terrible and weird ... and alternately meaningful and meaningless in ways that we never understand until we encounter them, or maybe not until after, when the mysteries of our minds grant us a flash of understanding.

Remember that time in Eighth Grade, the first time you felt it? That meant something.

What do you think?

-- Aaron | Jul. 14, 2008 | Link | Friends (9)

Going Away

Joe asks where you would go if you had to move to another country. I suspect that this question has been on a lot of minds lately. You guys probably already know that I lived in Slovenia for a while in the 1990s.

The problem is ... Slovenia is too orderly and predictable. Too safe, too moneyed, too normal.

I think I'd prefer to move away to Croatia, which, like the U.S., is a totally paranoid police state and where they have a good climate, good food, fabulous beaches, fiery Balkan tempers, folk-dancing natives and mind-blowingly beautiful towns where people live in downwardly-mobile poverty because their Fascist government, like ours, refuses to invest in economic development or infrastructure.

That is more like it.

Chris C. and I are going to Rovinj, Croatia (photo above) on a trip later this summer. Should be very nice.

-- Aaron | Jul. 10, 2008 | Link | Friends (8)

Camping Forecast

It's Thurs., June 10 at about 6:45 am.

Just checking the weather for the weekend ...

Going camping this weekend ...

Joe wrote to me late last night promising that it wasn't going to rain this weekend. I hope he is right! It will likely be really hot, regardless.

Busy day today.

I'm about to go into the city and haul my camping stuff up to Joe's place. He will tuck it into a corner until we're ready to go. I'll go and meet Chris C. at the car rental place tomorrow morning and then we'll all pack up and go. Hopefully things will work out as planned ...

-- Aaron | Jul. 10, 2008 | Link | Friends (0)

Hot and Cloudy

It's Tuesday, July 8 at about 8:00 am.

I'm sitting at my desk in my apartment, luxuriating in the air conditioning. I don't suppose it's really even that hot outside yet. But it will be. And sweaty.

Heading out to the gym, will work "mobile" in the city for most of the morning.

-- Aaron | Jul. 8, 2008 | Link | Friends (3)

Disco Summer

Eric Knucklecrack writes about property-values activists trying to prevent the re-opening of the legendary Roxy in New York as an alcohol-serving nightclub.

He makes a lot of good points ...

One thing that I want to point out about gay nightlife:

Gay men and Lesbians need to be able to find each other. Our biological families do not necessarily have gay people in them. We are unlikely to have gay parents. We are unlikely to have gay children. (Though, of course, both scenarios are possible). Society is not generally set up to foster the creation of gay communities in the workplace or in schools or in places of worship or other places where straight people forge a sense of community based on their affinities (or other).

We need to be able to find each other.

This is a quality of life concern for us.

Our quality of life concerns are just as important as those of Angry West Chelsea Mommy who wants to make sure that the Roxy does not re-open.

Am I totally satisfied by the fact that nightlife -- bars and clubs -- play such a huge role in the creation of gay communities, especially communities of gay men? Not really. On the other hand, I don't mind having a beer in my hand and I like to dance. Also: I'm an adult! I can have a beer or shake my ass if I want to. I'm not sure why Angry West Chelsea Mommy gets veto power over that.

We in the gay community need our institutions -- however flawed -- to stay open. We need to have spaces where we can go where we know how to find our community. These spaces in New York are vanishing, or have vanished.

-- Aaron | Jul. 7, 2008 | Link | Friends (11)

Storms

July 7, 2008 ... Interesting weather we are having here.

Lots of stuff to catch up on and will do it eventually. Seems like a very busy time around here. Camping this weekend is planned. Busy week at work. Many, many other things.

I'd love to be able to take a moment and cook a nice meal like I used to.

Comments are now enabled on this blog.

-- Aaron | Jul. 7, 2008 | Link | Friends (1)

Hot Day

Here we are ... July 3, 2008. 8:30 am.

Having a coffee and waiting for the day to begin.

A bit hot today, but ... I'll take it.

The air-conditioners in my apartment were "serviced" last week and now, if I'm not careful, I'll over-chill the place.

Looking forward to today, will dine in the city with a friend later.

-- Aaron | Jul. 3, 2008 | Link | Friends (1)

Shame on U

Pretty good song. (And some good memories.)

French R&B star Ophélie Winter had a big hit with this song in 1996 in her "native" country. I think that the English version is actually better and, if Ms. Winter sounds authentically American when she sings, it's because she grew up in New York City.

Anyway, music aside ...

I'm really posting this video as a sort of reminder of how good the fashions were back in the early and mid-90s. Christ, what happened to us? Doesn't anybody dress up anymore?

-- Aaron | Jun. 25, 2008 | Link | Friends (2)

New Haircut

Conversation from Sunday night at The Dugout:

Ned: Oh ... Aaron ... I like your new haircut!

Me: Thank you, Ned.

Ned [turning to Joe]: Joe, why does Aaron have a comb-over?

Ungh ... Yeah.

-- Aaron | Jun. 17, 2008 | Link | Friends (0)

Blogs: Dumbek at Jones Beach

Blogger Dumbek sees R.E.M. at Jones Beach. In the rain.

-- Aaron | Jun. 16, 2008 | Link | Friends (0)

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