MY LATE-NIGHT NAUGHTY DIARY

This is my Late-Night Naughty Diary, updated daily! Do you like the larger font? At the bottom of the page is a link to past diaries. Enjoy! XXOO -- Rachole

August 15, 2005 - Eureka! It's HIM again!
I am not well versed in science. But I do know that there exist certain theories to explain the logic of the universe. Recently, in a vegetarian café frequented by hippies and heroin addicts in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona, I stumbled upon a new rule of the Cosmos: the Existence of the Universal Film Guy.

Not a guy who works for the entertainment giant UniversalTM, but rather, a universal species of Film Nerd who looks and behaves the same, no matter what continent of the planet earth you're on. Typical traits: black attire, black-rimmed eyeglasses, baseball cap, slightly overweight from chronic lack of exercise, pale complexion from being in darkened screening rooms, profound shyness masked by cynical demeanor. Lonely and horny enough to submit to being photographed without cause by female strangers.

This particular fella was beaming Airport '77 from his Super 8 projector, to the violent indifference of the Caucasian dredlocked masses who were there to cop, not critique. But did this steadfast soldier of cinema waver? No way, José.

Thanks, Universal Film Guy(s), for making the world a little more pretty and exciting!

August 13, 2005 - Creepy Neighbors
My next-door neighbor is the most terrifying human being I've ever seen. I wish I could take a picture of him, but if I did you'd probably never hear from me again. He looks like Dennis Hopper/Frank when he wore that black wig and mustache in Blue Velvet, briefly fooling Kyle MacLachlan /Jeffrey. The big difference is that my neighbor is fatter and, well, you could say he looks much older than Frank/Dennis Hopper. But the truth is, he just looks dead.

He literally looks like a cadaver. There is no other way to describe him, and even after living next to him for a whole year, every time I see him he gives me a fright. He has these huge bags under his eyes that droop down the length of his cheeks. It is so scary. Have you seen someone with bags that droop all the way down their face? The only person I've seen like that is the actor Vincent Schiavelli, and the first time I saw him, as autopsy aficionado Mr. Vargas in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, he scared the crap out of me too. But at least he was funny.

I'm too scared of my neighbor to know if he's funny. I also don't know his name. On the rare occasions that we see each other in the hallway, we greet each other with an obligatory "Hola," but it's obvious that neither one of us is enjoying it. My neighbor is a very private man.

No matter what the weather's like, he always wears a thick brown polyester suit and tie. Another reason he looks so scary is that his impossibly black hair and mustache look, well, fake. Why would anyone wear a fake mustache? Why is he in diguise? I'm scared!

My neighbor always takes the elevator to his apartment, even though we both live on the first floor. He takes the elevator 'cause he has a hard-core smoking habit which, I'm sure, contributes to his corpse-like aspect. It is obvious that the poor man is very ill. But it´s more than that. Whenever our paths cross, I get a very, very bad vibe. A vibe of death.

Every morning at around 9:30, I'm awakened by the smell of cigarette smoke. My bed's against the wall that we share and I guess the smoke somehow travels through the wall??? into my apartment. It doesn't make any sense, I know, but there's no vent in between our apartments, so the smoke doesn't get in that way.

I'm not an anti-smoking hysteric, but try smelling smoke fist thing every morning of your life when you're not a smoker. It sucks. I go into the hall, it's three times worse and you can hardly see for the haze. I go outside to the terrace and it's smoky even out there. And not because he's out there on the terrace smoking. There's simply so much smoke inside his apartment that it seeps underneath his patio door and envelops the building.

I said my neighbor doesn't ever use his terrace. I know this because once I looked past the glass divider separating our terraces and his terrace was covered with a thick layer of dust. No footprints or anything to show that he'd stepped out there in many months. And his windows! When I saw those windows, a shiver ran through me.

We each have picture windows comprising nearly the whole outer wall. But his windows were completely blocked by shades. Who keeps their shades drawn all the time and never goes out onto the terrace in sunny, beautiful Barcelona? And the glass? Completely coated with a gray film of cigarette smoke. When I saw that terrace and those windows, I marked that as the creepiest moment yet with this neighbor.

Until the strong-smelling detergent incident. One morning I woke up to the usual smell of cigarettes ... but also a heavy, watery, chemical smell. Kind of like detergent, but not. Much stronger, almost burning. After a few minutes, I figured out what the smell was.

Lime.

What kind of neighbor plays with lime in his apartment? I am from Milwaukee, so I know the answer. He was also my neighbor of sorts. I hate to name drop, but he's now very famous and very, unpleasantly deceased, as are many of his casual acquaintances.

I'm scared!

As soon as I can, I'm gonna take a picture of his terrace and post it. Oh, I can't wait!

August 5, 2005 - Zombie Cities
So I fled the Zombie Boat for the shores of the formerly happening city of Venice, Italy. Like everyone else, I was always fascinated by this legendary city of canals, with its beauty and history and charm.

Of course, August is the worst time of the year to go, 'cause that's when every single person in Europe goes on vacation. Besides everything being more expensive and having to constantly struggle through a sea of fellow travelers, August is also when the local people of popular tourist destinations tend to get out. Partly to take their own vacations, and partly because daily life becomes unbearable.

In August, the regular shops close down and the tourist junk stands take over. With a sense of daily life absent, a hollow sensation takes over -- like you're on a movie set or at Disneyland. Meanwhile, you and the other travelers form a captive market for the crappy restaurants and shops that are there to squeeze every penny out of you that they can.

But in the case of Venice, it's even more extreme. This is because Venice is a nearly desolate city. My Lonely Planet guidebook, which ended up saving my ass, warned of this. This desolation is due to a combination of the terrible flooding (that will continue to get worse) and the skyrocketing real estate prices. In fact, much of the population of Venice has moved 5.5 kilometers across the bay, to an industrial area called Mestre.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, in the most touristy areas of Venice, the narrow, winding streets were deluged with a river of foreign tourists. It was exhausting. At times, there were so many people bottlenecked in the street that you had no choice but to stop and wait like you were in line at a movie premiere. Unfortunately, it wasn't the movie I came to see: endless terrace restaurants with brightly painted signs advertising "Tourist Menus," souvenier junk shops loaded with bright blown glass figures and the done-to-death painted masks that Kubrick unfortunately chose to use when he unfortunately made Eyes Wide Shut.

On the other hand, in the less touristy areas, there was scarcely a soul to be seen. Every once in a while, the creepy silence was punctuated by the rich music of church bells. And there were many churches. I randomly entered one of the smaller ones and found myself on a private date with centuries of exquisite and, save for some cameras, utterly unprotected sacred art. A sanctuary of cool stillness enveloped me and I felt the energy of those who came before.

The less massified streets, lined with stately six-story buildings but empty of shops and activity, were colorful and visually seductive, like a painting.

But beautiful paintings are found in museums. Museums are stylish mausoleums for dead things. And Venice, at least where and when I saw it, is a dead city. Where there are no shops -- no bakeries, no fruit stands, no grocery stores, no shoe stores, no dry cleaners -- there is no life. Of course, there are no stores because no one lives there anymore. The few stores that are there are chiefly for the tourists, and they charge accordingly. I bought three small biscuits at a Venetian bakery. It came to six euros. Normal people could never afford to pay such prices every day.

I'd like to go back to Venice in a different season and experience it then. It'll be even more desolate and sad then, but at least I can see the mausoleum that is Venice in a tranquil, more merciful state. Not stripped of its dignity and spirit. Not a reanimated corpse crawling with thousands of tourists and speculators feeding off its remains.

Since I'd left the cruise unexpectedly, I had to find a place to spend the night before my flight out the next morning. I checked a few hotels that my guidebook recommended, plus some others that were nearby. All were booked and, besides, well over 100 euros. I feared I was up Shit Creek. Or, with respect to Venice, Caca Canal.

With the last listed hotel in the guidebook, though, I got lucky. It was a family-owned pension called the Albergo Doni, located on a miraculously quiet side street near the Piazza San Marco, It offered a double room facing the canal for only 75 euros, crapper and shower not included. Though in my opinion as long as you have a bidet and a sink in the room, you're in good shape.

I loved the brocaded bedspreads, the wood floors, the lack of a TV, and the two windows that gave you spectacular views of the canal.

.

There, in that hotel, I experienced my first moments of Travel Heaven. It was the polar opposite of that awful cruise ship: real life instead of a gleaming imitation, a sense of history, and above all, humanity and humility. The desk guy was elegantly normal and polite. There was no fake friendliness, no manipulation, no smarmy aggression. The place had flooded at least twice in the last five years. I know because the dining room walls display photo montages of those days: photos of the desk guy, standing in the hallway up to his knees in water. The same photo of an older woman -- his mom or grandma? -- posing with a broom while wearing knee-high rubber boots, flanked by a couple of submerged Victorian-era upholstered chairs. In the photo, the water hasn't yet reached the oil paintings on the wall.

What struck me the most in these pictures were the smiles on their faces. I can't describe them as anything other than triumphant. These were the same smiles you see in pictures of amateur fishermen lifting up their big catch for the camera. Or proud homeowners posing in their newly remodeled kitchen. This family's precious home, their livelihood, is two feet underwater. There's nothing they can do about it. Tens of thousands of dollars in damage. Again. They know that, soon, all of it may be under water -- for good. I can imagine how I'd react: with hysterics.

So what do they do?

They grab a camera and take pictures. Shee-yit!

That's where I found life in Venice.


View from inside

August 4, 2005 - Back Again!
Three days later, I'm back from my seven-day visit to the Adriatic. How'd that happen? Magic?

I wish I could say so, 'cause it would be less embarrassing. The real reason is that, in the last entry, I got carried away with my fantasies. It was late, what can I say.

Basically, I made the mistake of thinking I'd be traveling. Traveling means different things to different people, so let me define what it is for me: discovering new sights, smells, and tastes. Encountering the people living in these lands. Observing the differences. Enjoying them. These are the reasons I love traveling.

But this was not a normal travel experience, and I knew that from the get-go. What I'm talking about is the inverted crucifix of true travel: that foul and unholy creature of crappy consumerism, false experience, and blissful ignorance that we call The Maritime Cruise.

Now, I must first confess that admitting in my Late-Nite Naughty Diary that I have, of my free will, been a passenger on a cruise feels similar to admitting that I have, of my free will, copulated with German Shepherds. Unwilling German Shepherds. All I can offer in my defense is to say the trip was given to me as a gift. And a very expensive gift at that. Do I feel bad talking shit about an expensive gift? Yes, pretty much.

But dear lord, it was awful.

I knew that cruise ships are horrible polluters of the world's waters, maritime litterbugs that leave the world's beaches strewn with debris and chemical contaminants and caca. I knew they waste tremendous amounts of energy for no legitimate purpose -- unless you consider unleashing hordes of clueless tourists on beleaguered locales crawling with pickpockets and trinket shops a boon to intercultural understanding.

I already figured that real cruise ships were not like The Love Boat. I knew there'd be no enchanting Mr. Rourke or Tattoo to greet us, that I wouldn't be bumping elbows with any fabulously plump, muumuu-wearing Hollywood veterans setting a course for adventure, their minds on a new romance ... and a kick-start to their careers.

What I learned is that a cruise ship is basically a floating jail. A totalitarian Happy Camp of mediocrity in the middle of the sea, run by stressed-out minimum wage workers who've undergone extensive corporate cross-training in simulated camaraderie, coercive courtesy, and crude authoritarianism.

Let's set aside the many minor irritants -- for instance, the endless lines of people waiting their turn at the disheartening buffet of wieners, discount cold cuts, processed cheese, fish sticks, and fluorescent desserts. Forget about the medically-lit dining room filled with blue-suited goombahs who catch you just as you're about to slink off to an empty table to suffer in private with your tray of limp, strip-mall morsels. Blue-suited beefcakes who become dining room border cops at the slightest indication of independence from the herd. First they detain you, then motion towards an 8-top table with two empty seats, where you are to sit with six strangers. Perhaps you wonder why you can't sit alone when there are clearly many unoccupied tables, all set and ready to go. The answer is, my dear selfish child, if you sat at those tables, that would mean that they'd have to be cleaned later. They do not like to clean tables unnecessarily.

Forget the creepy claustrophobic cabins with low vinyl ceilings whose strange orifices (sprinklers, smoke detectors, P.A. speakers, other round portals that you start to fear may be camera lenses) remind you of that scene in the original Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, where the bratty cowboy kid accidentally gets shrunk and his mom picks him up between her fingers and drops him in her purse. Forget the absence of any dark or romantic corner in which you can hide from the horrifically brilliant lighting (or the horrifically brilliant flashes of white fangs behind the drawn-back lips of the waiters/waitresses/hostesses/bellhops), the deep-freeze air conditioning that leaves you with a constant throat drip... But as I said, forget all this.

Let us also forget about the obvious goal of the whole setup: to get you to spend as much cash as possible on goods and services on board, in spite of the fact that you've already paid thousands for the trip. Like, you can use the Internet here ... for 12 euros an hour. Oh, and there's an big involuntary tip of 60 euros per person, also not included in the package. Instead, the ship staff conveniently charge it to your credit card. If you want a beer (or water or Sprite) with your meal, you're asked to produce your magnetic Cruise ATM card so the drink can be charged to your ever-increasing bill. And no cheating, either -- you can't buy water or bread at the supermarket and then bring it on board. If you try, there are security personnel at the ship's entrance whose job it is to confiscate those illicit items. Ironically, in this period of renewed Al Qaeda threats, there are no other security measures. Not even a metal detector. Why in the world would you need a frivolity like that in the dark, desolate ports of the former Ottoman Empire?

Forget all that. Because the thing that sticks more than anything is when some schmuck in reception asks to see your U.S. passport. You give it to him... and he keeps it. Then refuses to give it back till the end of the trip, seven bank account-draining days from now. You're supposed to go to Slovenia, Greece, Turkey... without your passport. Don't worry, the nice Big Brother Cruise Ship will hold onto it. You, little lady, you'll just lose it, heh heh heh. When you demand it back, he insists you tell him why it's to important to have your passport in your possession.

So you tell him you need your passport because you're out of here, effective immediately. The smiles on the faces of the receptionists fall to the ground like the curtain at a vaudeville flop. They look an awful lot like your girlfriend after you've both agreed that she is to move out, on the day she comes by your apartment to collect her things. They won't even look at you. They can't. It hurts too much. You've let them down. All they can do is stare fixedly at the papers on the desk, at their pens, their computer keyboards ... anything to avoid looking at you, you heartless bastard. Struggling to insert a calm human inflection into their speech, they ask you to tell them why. That is all their words ask. But the mask they've put on their voice screams, Why are you doing this to me???

Why on earth would you want to leave on the second day of the trip? Haven't we had fun together? Haven't we had some laughs? Didn't it mean anything to you? What kind of a person are you anyway? No one, none of the obedient sheep on our happy, floating Holiday Camp, ever leaves on the second day. Especially when the trip is already paid for!

You want to tell them that you don't want love to hurt anymore. That it's an open smile on a friendly shore. You wanna jump up on the handsome cherrywood reception desk and grandly announce that

"It's loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooove!

Wel-come a-board, it's looooo, ooooo, OOOOVE!"

But you don't. Instead you sign a legal document that says, "Everything was great. I'm just a huge fucking asshole and I should be in a mental hospital." Then you take a water taxi to Venice in a torrential downpour. The taxista is barrel-shaped and covered head to toe in rain gear. A soggy cigar is stuck in his mouth and he's not in the least bit of a bad mood. You watch the ship retreat behind you like in the end of a horror movie. You feel your soaked clothes cling to your skin and you feel like serenading the taxista. So this time you do.


The same cruise ship last February, after breaking down in a storm off the coast of Tunisia, getting stranded in the middle of the Mediterranean, and almost killing all 700 on board. No passports were reported missing.

August 1, 2005 - Gone Again
Tomorrow I'm leaving for a seven-day trip through the Adriatic Sea. When I lived in the US I never paid attention to where that was, 'cause when the hell was I ever gonna get over there? Now, since I'm suddenly going there, I've made the effort to find out that it's one sea east of the Mediterranean, between Italy and the coasts of Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia. Now I just looked again and see that the trip'll be ending in Athens, which means that I'll be traveling through the Ionian Sea to get there. The Ionian Sea is south of the Adriatic, and my only exposure to that sea is through high school assigned readings of Homer. "Why do I have to read this crap?" I remember thinking. "When's this long-winded stuff gonna have anything to do with my life?" I thought of those books like I thought of math and chemistry. I saw no connection to the life I lived. In fact, no connection to life itself. It was all an abstraction, and a big pain in the butt designed to complicate my life, certainly not to enhance it.

Now I can't wait to read The Odyssey and The lliad again. It's not just that I've matured slightly. I vaguely remember moments from those stories, fraught with violence and beauty and excitement. Those were the moments that stuck with me, that touched me.

Now I suddenly feel that, like the worlds portrayed in those stories, I'm also living in a world with a clearly marked expiration date. Until September 11th, I lived under the illusion that death was something that happened to old people, in movies, in Homer's stories, and yes, finally, to me -- but only way, way down the line. Does every American generation have its own weird, compartmentalized understanding of death? My parents grew up with "duck and cover." I grew up with "Just Say No" and "The Evil Empire". Today, suicide bombings are the new punk rock.

History just keeps getting recycled. I suddenly feel so old.

As my not-so-crazy music teacher John Ronsheim used to yell at us in class, "Old wine, new bottle."

But I like wine anyway.

July 31, 2005 - What I'm Saying Is, I'm Back
I'm sure it happens to you too: you get an embarrassing song stuck in your head. It's so embarrassing, you almost die of embarrassment when you catch yourself singing it, out loud, to yourself as you pick up cat vomit from various corners of your apartment. And pull cat hairs off your clothes with strip after strip of masking tape. Strips of masking tape 'cause you are still too cheap and immature and commitment-phobic to ever buy a real, dignified Lint-RollerTM.

And once you catch yourself singing it, you realize with horror that you've been singing it all day long. On your errands to the bank, the grocery store, the Chinese discount store, the photo-mat. You wonder who's caught you singing it. You decide to move to yet another country within the European Union. Then you remember that you have no money and so you can't. And then you realize how hopeless it is. You're irretrievably fucked. And all you can do is Surrender.

I feel good from my head to my shoes.
Know where I'm goin' and I know what to do
I tidied up my point of view, I got a New Attitude!TM

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