these streets will make you feel brand new

as i venture out into the world on my own i am starting to figure some stuff out about myself. i am over paranoid about having food allergies. i love meeting new people and i enjoy it alot more since i decided to quit being awkward. i despise people who i want to be just like. i can be wildly inappropriate, but i love doing it. oh, and I LOVE NEW YORK. not the sassy sista from the VH1 show, though i do love her too.

i love the city
the people
the sights
the smells
the attitudes
the food
the atmosphere
everything

my grandpa lives here, smack in the middle of park avenue, three blocks from central park. since on this particular adventure i am not visiting any schools, i have a couple of days to kill. the first day that i showed up here i was hungover and slightly disoriented after a few days of good times in philly and connecticut. i dropped my things off at pops and then rolled out to see the city. my first wanderings took me to fifth avenue to explore the lifestyles of the rich and famous. as soon as i come within view of the plaza hotel i noticed tons of video cameras and people. uuhh ok so whats this about? next thing i know doctor phil's balding self is talking to a tattooed and leather clad man with motorcycles. nice motorcycles. it must have been his midlife crisis special. dr. phil really has nothing interesting to offer me so i moved on with my life. strolling down the avenue i stared at the ridiculous looking people going into the high fashion boutiques, the plump tourists waiting for their chance to pose next to the models in front of abercrombie, the homeless guys shaking cups at passersby and just hoping for enough change to buy their next drink. people of all sorts rubbing shoulders on the streets and living on the same tiny island and calling it home. alas, i digress and wax nostalgic.

after this small stroll i went to lunch with a couple of my former sail caribbean students at serendipity. deeeelicious. then we went walking through the streets some more. we passed 30 rock, david letterman, and a huge street fair stretching for blocks down lexington avenue. as we kept wandering we realized that the VMAs were scheduled for that night at the radio city music hall. that explains all of the ridiculously formal people waiting in lines that said "check in." we wandered towards sixth ave and all of a sudden hear taylor swift blasting over through the streets. assuming its just a promo for the show that night, we kept walking. we were about to turn a corner when we saw people running back towards where we came from. there she is. my future wife and the love of my life- T.Swift singing and rockin out on top of a cab roughly 50 feet away from me. AAAAHAAAHHHHHHHHh all of my hopes and dreams have come true. i saw her. after standing there in shock for roughly 45 seconds her song ended and she climbed off the cab and went back inside, presumably to do more rehearsing or something. my life has been made almost complete. now i just have to figure out a way to get her to marry me. ideas? thoughts? suggestions?

so that concluded the main excitement for sunday. monday rolls around. i decided to walk from pop's apt uptown all the way down to ground zero to pay my respects. i passed through madison square park, canal street, soho, noho and NYU's main campus. the people watching was world class and i highly suggest to anyone who visits to say screw the subway, screw the cabs and hoof it all over. i wandered for six hours and walked 8-9 miles. amazing. on the way downtown i was confronted with gates and policemen everywhere. wtf? im just trying to go for stroll and you are in the way sir. i inquire as to why they are blocking me. dont they know i am a big deal? no. they do not know that i am a big deal. in fact, the reason they are there is because the president of the united states is within that block delivering a speech. oh. barry O. i think. hes a big deal. he can block my way. that being dealt with i continued on my way

today i am staying in my dad's hotel because he is here on business. downstairs, as i live and breathe, serena williams is doing an appearance for nike, so im gonna go sneak around and see what i can see. if i get arrested, its been lovely blogging for you for the last seven months. if i dont, then expect more to come in this epic adventure story.

hello. in the past ten days i have had two encounters with bears. that may be as many as i have had in the past ten years. i also danced with some hippies in the streets, drove nearly a thousand miles, made some new friends, and politely informed a pita pit worker that the pita she was rolling resembled an african refugee and that she should redo it. all in all, relatively good week. right?

ok well maybe that was not the whole week. for the most part i have been sitting on my ass doing nothing. i have watched the entire fourth season of weeds, third season of dexter, and i am halfway through the first season of 30 rock. god i love netflix on demand. its amazing. also i have been socializing with my lovely grandmother, gigi. i'm sure i've talked about gigi before, but just to refresh everyone's memory, i'll give you the quick and dirty 411 on gigi. shes 75, acts 93, only drinks chardonnay, and only if said chardonnay is under 6 bucks and only after 6:00. however, if she does not have a little class of cheap, chilled, chard in her hand at 6:02 she will yell that shes late for cocktails and boogie on over to the fridge. she watches the stock market like its a match to the death between a sabre tooth tiger and a stegosaurus (sabre tooth has the teeth, stego has the spikey tail- tough call on who'd win), and of course she could never miss tennis match or golf tourney- she just likes yelling at the balls. how do i know all these fun facts- why i lived with her of course, and now gigi is in spokane visiting my family.

since gig (pronounced geeg, not to rhyme with fig) and i are generally outsiders in my house, have no friends in spokane, and nearly get lost going to the mailbox we have been at home for days doing nothing. fun. not. anyways, yesterday my mom decided to take us up to this area called green bluff where you can go pick apples and peaches and veggies and stuff from all these farms. well as soon as we get up there gigi became determined to not only get the most fruit, but to get the biggest and tastiest fruit. her tendency to act older than she is quickly disappeared and she was spry as a bird, nimbly plucking peaches from the trees and not hesitating to take a bite when she thought necessary. you gotta sample the product, right? so as gigi stood by, both arms straight out to her sides to avoid dripping peach juice down her front, sortof like a toddler does when they are peeing in their pants, my mother and i continued gathering fruit. gigi liked to get her input in whenever she could- "charlie grab that one!" gigi its 8 feet in the air "i dont care you're tall grab it!" alright gig.... and so it continued. by the time we got to the third farm gigi was over picking in the field and had started considering the 5 finger discount approach to fresh produce. "OOHHH char look at that tomato- wouldnt you just love that with some nice mozz and balsamic, hey snatch that right up, will ya? just stick it in your pocket they'll never know." yet again i was forced to refuse the requests of my kleptomania-cal grandmother. i will not be an enabler in her quest to be the stingiest person on earth. lord knows she does a good enough job herself. after a brief encounter with some freakishly large zucchini (too big to steal) and, in her words "a wonderful" porta potty, we packed up the car and headed for home. another eventful day done.

bless my soul, herc was on a role

so this summer at my job as a yachting staffer (we dont say camp counselor, its below us) i regularly had disney song jam sesh's with the kids on the boat. so as soon as i got home i bought like thirty disney songs and there is a slight possibility that i am still jamming to them. i just enjoy hearing some soulful sistas singing about a disney friendly version (read: no sex, murder or libations) of a greek myth, alright? good. glad we could talk about that.

now i am twenty one years young. oh shiiiiii

iiiit. its a big deal. im not sure if you are aware of how long i have waited for this day. since i was roughly fifteen years old i have been counting down to it. i knew that my bday was going to be on a saturday and, oh buddy, i was stoked. i had visions of a huge party with all my friends, possibly a keg, tons of presents and a day dedicated to my final gateway to adulthood. alas, like many of my visions of grandeur relating to my life, this situation did not come true. i did go to downtown whitefish for the first time and saw no one that i knew. oh and i was only with tayler. and sober. whenever i met people who fou

nd out it was my 21st they would say "why arent you puking/blacked out?" at this i would awkwardly shuffle my feat, jingle some change in my pocket and say "uuhhh im workin on it." i should have drowned my sorrows in my beer, but unfortunately i cannot afford that type of therapy very often anymore. i am also semi financially independent- thanks mom and dad!!! so anywho, after an hour and half of standing in the corner of the bar with tayler while some dude tried to pick her up we headed for the door. this is when the night nearly completely redeemed itself!!!!

tayler babysits for this dude who is 100% creeper manchild complete with wife and four kids. if tommy boy and and dennis the menace had a love child, that would be chad. taytay always complains that he is creepy and hits on her so i say "dont babysit for him anymore" yet she doesnt listen. so on the way out of the bar she starts hitting him in the arm saying 'byebyebyebye" and then he strikes up a conversation after kissing her on the cheek (!!!). i resume awkward foot shuffle and change jangle. i feel a tap on my shoulder and i turn around. well hello drunk 35 year old man. he says "what the fuck this guy is hitting on your girl".. shes not my girl just a friend. in the following minutes me and this guy get to know each other. his name is marty or monty and... well thats a

ll i really got out of him. however, we did discuss the manchild at length. ohhhh geeze. monty came to the conclusion that the manchild looks like david bowie, but gay. well that or a gay fabio with short hair. he goes up to tayler, taps her on the shoulder and says "why the fuck are you talking to this guy, charlie's got it. hes got it." then extracts himself from the situation and goes on his merry way. i pulled taytay away from the creepmaster and leave the bar laughing so hard that i nearly shed a tear.

the next night, the night of my actual day of birth, i donned an uncle sam style hat which had "21" and "charlie" emblazoned onto it. it was given to me by my parents dear friends who are, in fact, over 60. they attended my party. as did their friends who are also over 60. in fact there were only three people younger than 40 at my party- me, my friend kate and my aunts boyfriend who may or may not be closer to my age than hers. either way, below 40 and thats what counts. after barbecuing, imbibing and chatting for a while, it was time for presents. the only people who brought me presents were not related to me. my parents just couldnt schedule it in to pick one up for me on my birthday. its alright, it caught them off guard. its not like my birthday is the same day every year or anything. whatever. move on to cake. unfortunately, i do not like cake, so i had key lime pie instead. i dont really like that either. oh well. birthday cake shots it is- vodka and franjelico followed with a sugar-coated lemon. deeeee-licious. all present, including 60+ crowd, took part. it was a sight to see. after that kate turned on some techno so we dance partied for a while. well mostly my mom and kates mom. everyone else just kinda sat there. afterwards i ended up at home, soberish considering it was my 21st. i wouldnt have even been par for the course on a regular night. its alright though- i still have my birthday hat and i can go celebrate all over the world. YES!

when i grow up i want to be a superhero

today as i walked through the wilderness of upper-middle suburbia with my dog, a thought struck me. dogs have it made. i watched as marge charged forwards, smelling all sorts of new smells, drinking in the sweet perfume of this mid august day. she jumped over logs, played with sticks, and peed wherever she felt it necessary, all the while looking to me for words of encouragement and approval. she had the doggy smile on throughout our whole hour long stroll through the forest. nothing could bring her down. she ran, she swam, she scared a bald eagle out of a tree. i want to do that, but alas society dictates that i must pee in the toilet, or at the very least be discreet about peeing in public, and i'm fairly certain that if i attempt to scare a bald eagle out of a tree i could be arrested for harassing and endangered species and/or clawed by said species (i considered that possibility in depth during my walk).  my wistful ponderings of life as a canine promptly helped me onto another train of thought: i want to be an animorph. 

animorphs were quite possibly the coolest superheroes ever. they were in their early teens, they fought an alien race called the yeerks,  and they got to go to the zoo all the time to acquire animals. oh yeah, and they could morph into a ferocious beast of a creature whenever they felt like it. i mean being a dog is one thing, but think about morphing into a rhino, an elephant, or a vicious bald eagle. freakin sweet right? im not going to lie, after i finished the first animorphs book that i read (third grade, the first volume of the megamorphs books) i may have tried to acquire my grandparents dog. for those of you who were not animorphs fans, acquiring is when the animorphs touch an animal so that they can later morph into it. i also tried to open diagon alley next to the dumpsters behind my middle school using a pencil as a wand, but thats another story.  i think that i read the first 33 or so animorphs books before i got burned out. they were released once a month and i would beg my mom to buy me one, read it all in one night, and then have to wait another 30 days before i got another. thirty days to a 9 year old is like a year to more grown up people. it was BRUTAL. dont worry though, i got the deets on how the series ended. i spent several hours on wikipedia this spring reading up on all the plot summaries that i missed. 

i dont think i have ever stopped wanting to be an animorph, or a wizard for that matter, which is why i am always wrapped up in a book. i see books not so much as an escape from reality as a way to provide you with a new perspective. i didnt necessarily want to leave my old life behind to become an animorph and run off to fight the yeerks. no. i just wanted to be able to morph into cool stuff and have some new adventures off of these two feet. i wanted to run around in the woods behind my house, sniffing new smells and finding whole new worlds behind every stump. it seems as though my dog is always filled with delight at finding a new beetle or anthill. maybe that is what i want. that sense of wonder at the smallest things. the life of a dog. and, of course, the privilege of peeing anywhere. 

all who wander are not lost

some people do not have to search, for they find their niche early in life and rest there seemingly content and resigned at times. i envy them, but i usually do not understand them, and seldom do they understand me. i am one of the searchers. There are, i believe, millions of us. We are not at all unhappy, but neither are we content. We continue to explore life, hoping to uncover its ultimate secret. We continue to explore ourselves, hoping to understand. We like to walk along the beach, we are drawn by the ocean, taken by its power and unspeakable beauty. we like forests, mountains, deserts, hidden rivers, and lovely cities as well. our sadness is as much a part of our lives as our laughter. To share our sadness with the ones we love is perhaps as great a joy we know, unless it is to share our laughter. We searchers are ambitions for life itself and for anything beautiful and can provide. we do not want to prove ourselves to others or compete for love. This passage is for wonderers, dreamers, and lovers who dare to ask of life everything which is good and beautiful.

-Anonymous

twenty years from now you will be more disappointed in the things you didnt do than the ones that you did do. so throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbour, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

-Mark Twain

and finally...

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather my sparks should burn out in a blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow than asleep and permanent as a planet. the proper function of a man is to live, not to exist. i shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.

I shall use my time.

-Jack London

put my swag on

hello hello. and how are you today? i am FAN-friggin-TASTIC because tomorrow i leave for the caribbean for 2 months WAWAWEEWA i will be in red water panties!!!! just kidding i only have black, gray, blue, and green water panties i was only teasing you with the red ones. and in my current state i can only wear the gray ones and the black ones. my diet of fast food, fried food and booze has helped me gain a few pounds in the last month... oops. at least im off to a magical land where teenagers who dont know how to boil water (no really they dont) get to cook for me for two months. two bites of cement like risotto for dinner helps everyone get slim and trim.

well since we have last communicated via blog i have returned from germany in once piece, no thanks to those bastards at air france. monday before im supposed to go transatlantic on an air france flight in an airbus 330 from paris a transatlantic air france flight in an airbus 330 going to paris went down, as im sure you all know. so how good did i feel about my flight? well i was convinced we were gonna die somewhere around greenland. i was neurotic the whole damn flight!!! i was planning on watching movies in my personal in seat tv, like i did on the flight over, to calm myself, but alas, no personal in seat tvs for me. bastards. so i strain my neck looking at the 4inch by 4 inch tv in the ceiling. also i had an issue with the movies- the first two were last chance harvey and yes man. no problem with those. then they whip out marley and me. AWW HELL NAW!!!! i know exactly what that movie is about and i have attempted to read the book twice but i have to stop 2/3s of the way through because i know whats coming. seeing and actual dog on screen and knowing whats about to happen would not bode well for me. i had absolutely zero intention of watching this movie. it became a non issue however because after i had some semi-good pasta for the hot meal of the trip i was convinced that i was having an allergic reaction so three benedryl later its night night charlie. oh and fun fact- definitely wasnt having a reaction im just a paranoid retard. 34 points for me.

so since my arrival in atlanta i have been hanging out with all the high school buddies and neighborhood pals. i have been to the pool, eaten at every damn restaurant in this town, been to the aquarium to look at the majestic whale sharks and creepy ass jellyfish, which stacy finds fascinating, and i have generally just been a bum for ten days. amazing. oh yeah, AND I GOT A TATTOO!!!!!!! i have been wanting one for like a year and a half and after ping ponging between many ideas i finally settled on a compass. i enjoy sailing and i am kinda going on this expedition "to find myself," as tristan so eloquently says, for the next year and any and all expeditions need a compass.. duh. so there it is, on top of my foot. i know it looks like an ankle due to the hair but i just have hobbit feet. no worries.

tomorrow i leave for the caribbean to hang out with some sweet teenagers and impart my knowledge and wisdom to them aka tell them to go ask someone else whenever they have a question that i dont know the answer to, which is roughly 90% of them. dont worry about it. im a G.

das kinder no liken das bier!

ok so thats not actually german but its my version of the language. i have become fluent in like three days, mostly because i know about five words now as opposed to my original 2 and then everything else i make guttural noises and yell like cartman in the south park episode "the passion of the jew." its a classic.

so the last time i had left you i had just arrived in berlin i think and we hadnt done too much yet. wellllll thursday we went sightseeing and did some standard touristy stuff. holocaust memorial, reichstag (german parliament), checkpoint charlie which separated east and west berlin, all that stuff. also on thursday we didnt eat for like... a really really long time. i was surprisingly ok with this, however i still have not had a schnitzel because they scare me a little bit. thursday for dinner, after nearly starving to death walkiing all the F over berlin we decided to make some delicious bratwursts and some other stuff. kates kitchen is down the hall from her room so we went in and started making some delicious eats. we were coming and going from teh kitchen, figuring everything was fine. kate, however, decided to turn up the brats because they were taking far too long to brown up properly. bastards. we return to her room to drink our beer and hang out for a couple minutes. after a rousing conversation of some sort we returned to the hallway to smell smoke and realize that there are clouds of it billowing from the kitchen. AAAHHHHH we run into the kitchen only to find our delicious brats burning!!!! nbd. we can just scrape the burned part off a little bit. kate tries to hold them out the window so that the smoke doesnt come inside anymore. right before i say "hey we can just scrape them off" she makes and executive decision to ditch the brats and tosses them out her window, four stories to the cold, unforgiving ground. FML. bye brats. i cried.

after this a dutchman named kasper convinced us to go out to dinner with him and a couple friends quickly before we were supposed to meet other people at a bar. the couple friends turned out to be like 12 people and we were 2 hour late to the bar. NBD. also i was sitting at one end of the table that was exclusively dutch. they spoke some english because its rude to speak a language that not everyone can understand, but its kinda rough having to speak to your buds all in another language. i get it. i sat there some, not awkwardly mind you, just kinda acting like i was interested. they could have been saying that i am a giant homo with buckteeth and three nipples and i woudnt have been the wiser, i probably would have smiled slightly and looked at my beer some more. i only looked at my beer because at some point in the night i started having mad chest pains, which FREAK ME OUT. i hate that shit. its probably cuz i have mad allergies. damn genetics. i kinda stopped drinking for the night, bummer, but i still had some GTs at the restaurant (where i found another love of my life, a german girl named sarah) and the cuban bar where we discussed the choking game and hypothetical theme park ideas centered around it for roughly an hour. maybe more. good times all around.

we also had some other adventures too- more on that later because kate needs the internet and i cant use my computer here fo free. baaaaahhhh