This morning finds me nearing the end of a three-hour lecture in the most amazing city in the world, London. I know, my last post didn't find me all that excited about my trip to London, but believe me, have I ever changed my tune. If you've never been to London, you might not understand what's so great about it, so conveniently, I've made you a list of the reasons why it's so wonderful and why you should be jealous of me right now.
Reasons to Love London:
1. Fashion: The fashion here is remarkable. Well, to be honest, it's rather more toned-down that a lot of the wild stuff I've witnessed in Boston, but perhaps that's a good thing. Either way, it's very trendy. I've bought a lot of clothes. Too many clothes. But that's alright because it's London. Colors that are in right now are pastels and also striped patterns, like the sailor look, reds and navies and golds. It's absolutely fabulous. I can dress like I think my name is Blaine Anderson and nobody looks at me twice.
2. History: History is everywhere but it's not that entirely dull kind of history, it's very classic and interesting. There are incredible museums with some of the most famous art and artifacts in the world and there are ancient buildings and cathedrals that are simply glorious and even if you don't care who lived there or what they did, it's still very nice to look at and fun to take pictures of.
3. Pubs: Pubs are like bars but classier and with better food. The best food in London is at the pubs. Everyone in pubs speaks with a British accent and the waiters are friendly and say "cheers" when they leave the table and you don't have to tip. Best of all, you can go to pubs even though you're only eighteen. There is a whole new maturity in London that you don't get as a nineteen year old palling around Boston. It's great.
4. Weather: Most days it's rainy, which a lot of people might not like, but I love. Rain means it's always perfect writing weather and people get to wear cute raincoats and it's never overly-hot and there's always an excuse to drink hot coffee. (Or tea!) But it does get warm here too, and the sun actually doesn't set until ten at night, so the days are endless and it's lovely.
5. Getting hit on: British men can be quite randy and when you are walking the streets with friends, especially when it gets later and the people are out drinking, you get whistled and hit on constantly. If ever you needed a self-esteem boost, London is the place to be.
6. Transport Ease: There are so many places to go and it is so easy to go to those places. You don't need a car or a driver's license. All you need is a tube pass and you hold magic in your hands. The tube can take you anywhere and everywhere and in this way you can see just about everything you could possibly dream of seeing. It's fantastic.
7. Accents: British accents are sophisticated and sexy and sometimes, if you're very good at it, you can pretend to have one too and blend right in.
8. Classiness: Everything in London is very classy. Even the sluts seem classier here. The city is classier than American cities and safer too. There is a whole ton of night life that just floods the streets on the weekends. Everyone is just out having a good time and it's really lovely to see.
9. A certain "laissez-faire" approach to life: British people are more chill than Americans. That's not to say they're lazy or slow, quite the opposite, they're on top of things. But they're relaxed about things. The rules aren't so strict or uptight. You can drink on the street, you can drink at age 18, you can smoke almost anywhere, people don't bother you, and there is a lot more nudity on TV. Call me a filthy lib but there's something very appealing about all that. I blame it on the fact that I'm a writer. The British way of life is fascinating for me as a writer, there is a certain candidness and honesty that you don't get in America and I appreciate it.
10. Smart: The reason that people in London can be so candid and laid back is because they're smart enough not to be stupid. They have self-control. They know how to enjoy life but be successful at life at the same time. They aren't bums. They've figured it out.
11. Shopping: There's tons of stuff to buy. (Too much stuff to buy.)
12. Literature: All the best writers, like C.S. Lewis and Tolkien and Jane Austen lived here (or at least around here).
13. Celebrities: A lot of celebrities live here and come here and I saw Romy from the xx at an outdoor shopping festival and that is a beautiful thing.
14. Time: It feels like time has stopped in this little place, or maybe it's the other way around: time has stopped everywhere else and we're just moving in our circle of time here. Either way, it feels like we could live here forever and not get any older, and the rest of the world would fly by but we would stay here, happy, and the rest of the world doesn't even exist or matter.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Monday, May 14, 2012
London, Sleeping, Edward Sharpe and Glee
Blah Blah Blah this post is going to contain absolutely nothing of substance, I just feel like I should write because it's May 14th and that means I'm going to London today but I'll be there tomorrow, which is still really confusing but whatever, I'm not gonna try and figure out exactly how many hours I'm losing or anything like that, I just really don't care.
I got home on Wednesday- now it's Monday, so I've had very little time to rest and recuperate from my first year of college, which was, purely, exhausting. Not even because the work was all that hard (it wasn't. Or maybe it was but I just didn't do any of it. That sounds about right.) I'm such a lazy drip and all I want to do is sleep all the time and usually my bed has no problem lulling me back into the oblivion of napping and even when I wake up, all I can think about is going back to sleep. It's a fantasy really, it's all I daydream about. Napping, napping, napping, sleeping, sleep. I understand now what Dooce was talking about in her blog, one of the earlier posts from back when she started it in 2001...holy mother at the time I was eight I think- yeah I was eight, and I had no idea how much what she was writing at the time would resonate with me someday, eleven years later:
http://dooce.com/archives/daily/10_04_2001.html
The first time I read that, I was like woah Dooce I feel ya, but I had no idea really at the time what she was talking about. The desire for sleep that I used to feel, back in high school, was just the normal sleepiness of a teenager. Teenagers like sleeping,we need a lot of it, we've got major hormone action and we've got a crap load of course work and man we are just under a whole lot of stress all of the time. Now college students, famously, we're not supposed to sleep, and I don't get as much as I would like- that certainly is true- but the problem is I can't function on that little sleep like other kids can. Because of the drugs. Drugs make the sleep deprivation I used to feel now seem like just a yawn, a mild, vague feeling of tiredness. The sleepiness I feel now can only be described by the post I linked to above. It is all-consuming, incapacitating, entirely demanding. I cannot help but give into its demands, no matter my location- be it the subway, church, or in the middle of class. The sleep monster must be satiated.
So that has me a little worried for London, just because me and the sleep monster are still really grappling, we aren't getting along too well, I don't know how to resist him, and that could pose a real problem in London, where I'm expected to do all this vigorous course work and crap. But I'm not gonna worry about it anymore cause where's the point in that?
Meanwhile I went to an Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros concert Saturday. It would've been rad except our seats were super far away, which made it hard to get into the full feel of things, and the guy next to us was high as a kite and smelled it. He asked me what I liked most about Edward Sharpe- I fumbled a bit for an answer but told him they didn't have a song I didn't like, I liked the energy I'd seen on their youtube videos and they were just fun. In return, he told me they changed the way he thought about things. I said like what. He said...movement...like movement through space. I wanted to suggest that perhaps it was the pot that was changing the way he thought about movement through space but then he got engaged in a conversation with his Asian girlfriend, who was also high. Krista and I spent the rest of the concert imitating their dance movies- high hipster, as seems a fitting name for him- was doing a very energetic, weird jerky thing, kind of like he was a marionette and the puppeteer was off his meds- and Asian girlfriend was doing a swaying, dreamy, eyes-closed sort of thing, like she was having a spiritual experience. All in all, they made for a very entertaining night, until high hipster got a mysterious text and had to go, failing to return for the rest of the show. After that the only entertainment (besides the band obviously) was a bunch of drunk friends, maybe in their late twenties or early thirties, all behaving in a thoroughly obnoxious manner not at all appropriate for their age which reminded me why drinking alcohol in public is a bad idea if you want to maintain any semblance of dignity of your person at all. There were several females in the party, none of them overly-attractive, all shouting at each other and hugging at regular intervals and talking through the majority of the performances. Krista aptly described them as a group that would have been much better suited to a Kenny Chesney concert- it was true. They were trying to be cool and indie but everything about them screamed the opposite. Major secondhand embarrassment. They watched a video of a cat chasing a fish on an iPad nine times. Nine. Times. People. I mean I guess it's kinda funny but oh wait IT'S NOT THAT FUNNY. I could give them the benefit of the doubt and say alcohol played a role but to be fair they had barely started drinking at that point, so I'm pretty sure they were just idiots even while sober. The Asian chick left after a while (she needed wider, more open space in which to sway in) but her and high hipster's backpack was still in the seat and one of the two guys in the drunk group, Douchebag McGee as I fondly refer to him, stole a joint from her backpack and smoked it. If Douchebag McGee was an obnoxious drunk, he was even worse while stoned. He proceeded to dance provocatively, (lots of pelvic thrusting), feel up his girlfriend, and shout. Just general shouting. He also stole a poster from me in a manner which I expect he thought was sly, but much to his chagrin, I stole it back when he wasn't looking. He was not happy.
Overall very fun night. It was topped off by a drunk girl, slender with a cheetah-patterned bra which was entirely visible through the gaps in her slashed and tattered t-shirt that was falling off her skinny shoulders (Fashion statement people) stumbling and clutching onto a hot boyfriend who yelled gleefully "my girlfriend's drunk!" The next I saw of them, the girl was lying down on the sidewalk outside of the Orpheum theater with her boyfriend on top of her, engaged in some passionate kissing/slobbering. I might've been disgusted, but the couple was attractive and the girl had lots of badass tattoos so I was alright with it. Also, I've never seen anyone literally lay down in the streets of Boston and get it on before, so that was kind of cool. A new high of debauchery/patheticness.
So yup. Good times in the city. Boston, you're my home!
Other than that, what have I been doing with myself in the brief time that I've been home? Television. Catching up on New Girl, and, I confess, Glee. I love Glee and I'm not ashamed people. Not only is it funny, sexy, lovably stupid, entertaining, and musical in a good way- but it has Darren Criss. And I really like Darren Criss. Really really really a lot. I am actually completely smitten with Darren Criss but that's another story.
I've been listening to a lot of Rihanna, Kaki King, Justin Timberlake, Glee covers, Santigold, The Beatles, Audioslave and Justin Bieber. Don't judge, his new CD is catchy.
I've also been catching up with friends, and home-brewed coffee, and sleep, and my dog, and ice cream from Dairy Twist, and stuff like that.
But all that pleasantness is over because I have to go to London and yes I say have to and yes I'm not exactly excited but hopefully it'll be kind of fun and not totally miserable...
I'll let you know.
Catch ya on the flipside my blogging friends.
I got home on Wednesday- now it's Monday, so I've had very little time to rest and recuperate from my first year of college, which was, purely, exhausting. Not even because the work was all that hard (it wasn't. Or maybe it was but I just didn't do any of it. That sounds about right.) I'm such a lazy drip and all I want to do is sleep all the time and usually my bed has no problem lulling me back into the oblivion of napping and even when I wake up, all I can think about is going back to sleep. It's a fantasy really, it's all I daydream about. Napping, napping, napping, sleeping, sleep. I understand now what Dooce was talking about in her blog, one of the earlier posts from back when she started it in 2001...holy mother at the time I was eight I think- yeah I was eight, and I had no idea how much what she was writing at the time would resonate with me someday, eleven years later:
http://dooce.com/archives/daily/10_04_2001.html
The first time I read that, I was like woah Dooce I feel ya, but I had no idea really at the time what she was talking about. The desire for sleep that I used to feel, back in high school, was just the normal sleepiness of a teenager. Teenagers like sleeping,we need a lot of it, we've got major hormone action and we've got a crap load of course work and man we are just under a whole lot of stress all of the time. Now college students, famously, we're not supposed to sleep, and I don't get as much as I would like- that certainly is true- but the problem is I can't function on that little sleep like other kids can. Because of the drugs. Drugs make the sleep deprivation I used to feel now seem like just a yawn, a mild, vague feeling of tiredness. The sleepiness I feel now can only be described by the post I linked to above. It is all-consuming, incapacitating, entirely demanding. I cannot help but give into its demands, no matter my location- be it the subway, church, or in the middle of class. The sleep monster must be satiated.
So that has me a little worried for London, just because me and the sleep monster are still really grappling, we aren't getting along too well, I don't know how to resist him, and that could pose a real problem in London, where I'm expected to do all this vigorous course work and crap. But I'm not gonna worry about it anymore cause where's the point in that?
Meanwhile I went to an Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros concert Saturday. It would've been rad except our seats were super far away, which made it hard to get into the full feel of things, and the guy next to us was high as a kite and smelled it. He asked me what I liked most about Edward Sharpe- I fumbled a bit for an answer but told him they didn't have a song I didn't like, I liked the energy I'd seen on their youtube videos and they were just fun. In return, he told me they changed the way he thought about things. I said like what. He said...movement...like movement through space. I wanted to suggest that perhaps it was the pot that was changing the way he thought about movement through space but then he got engaged in a conversation with his Asian girlfriend, who was also high. Krista and I spent the rest of the concert imitating their dance movies- high hipster, as seems a fitting name for him- was doing a very energetic, weird jerky thing, kind of like he was a marionette and the puppeteer was off his meds- and Asian girlfriend was doing a swaying, dreamy, eyes-closed sort of thing, like she was having a spiritual experience. All in all, they made for a very entertaining night, until high hipster got a mysterious text and had to go, failing to return for the rest of the show. After that the only entertainment (besides the band obviously) was a bunch of drunk friends, maybe in their late twenties or early thirties, all behaving in a thoroughly obnoxious manner not at all appropriate for their age which reminded me why drinking alcohol in public is a bad idea if you want to maintain any semblance of dignity of your person at all. There were several females in the party, none of them overly-attractive, all shouting at each other and hugging at regular intervals and talking through the majority of the performances. Krista aptly described them as a group that would have been much better suited to a Kenny Chesney concert- it was true. They were trying to be cool and indie but everything about them screamed the opposite. Major secondhand embarrassment. They watched a video of a cat chasing a fish on an iPad nine times. Nine. Times. People. I mean I guess it's kinda funny but oh wait IT'S NOT THAT FUNNY. I could give them the benefit of the doubt and say alcohol played a role but to be fair they had barely started drinking at that point, so I'm pretty sure they were just idiots even while sober. The Asian chick left after a while (she needed wider, more open space in which to sway in) but her and high hipster's backpack was still in the seat and one of the two guys in the drunk group, Douchebag McGee as I fondly refer to him, stole a joint from her backpack and smoked it. If Douchebag McGee was an obnoxious drunk, he was even worse while stoned. He proceeded to dance provocatively, (lots of pelvic thrusting), feel up his girlfriend, and shout. Just general shouting. He also stole a poster from me in a manner which I expect he thought was sly, but much to his chagrin, I stole it back when he wasn't looking. He was not happy.
Overall very fun night. It was topped off by a drunk girl, slender with a cheetah-patterned bra which was entirely visible through the gaps in her slashed and tattered t-shirt that was falling off her skinny shoulders (Fashion statement people) stumbling and clutching onto a hot boyfriend who yelled gleefully "my girlfriend's drunk!" The next I saw of them, the girl was lying down on the sidewalk outside of the Orpheum theater with her boyfriend on top of her, engaged in some passionate kissing/slobbering. I might've been disgusted, but the couple was attractive and the girl had lots of badass tattoos so I was alright with it. Also, I've never seen anyone literally lay down in the streets of Boston and get it on before, so that was kind of cool. A new high of debauchery/patheticness.
So yup. Good times in the city. Boston, you're my home!
Other than that, what have I been doing with myself in the brief time that I've been home? Television. Catching up on New Girl, and, I confess, Glee. I love Glee and I'm not ashamed people. Not only is it funny, sexy, lovably stupid, entertaining, and musical in a good way- but it has Darren Criss. And I really like Darren Criss. Really really really a lot. I am actually completely smitten with Darren Criss but that's another story.
I've been listening to a lot of Rihanna, Kaki King, Justin Timberlake, Glee covers, Santigold, The Beatles, Audioslave and Justin Bieber. Don't judge, his new CD is catchy.
I've also been catching up with friends, and home-brewed coffee, and sleep, and my dog, and ice cream from Dairy Twist, and stuff like that.
But all that pleasantness is over because I have to go to London and yes I say have to and yes I'm not exactly excited but hopefully it'll be kind of fun and not totally miserable...
I'll let you know.
Catch ya on the flipside my blogging friends.
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