Night out on the town
I went to NYC last night to see the single most brutal and painful movie I've ever seen in my life. The Downfall is the story of the final days of WWII through the eyes of the people in Hitler's bunker. This movie made shindler's list look like a romantic comedy. I've never, in all my years of being a history buff, EVER seen a story from that point of view. They must have shown 100 suicides along with the murder of 5 children by their mother and a whole family by their father. I always knew that there was strong loyalty in the Nazi party, but holy shit, I never knew it like that. There was a moment where one of Hitler's secretaries was eating and just broke down in tears because everyone was getting the idea that the war was a failure. It wasn't a knee jerk cry. When people cry it's normally because something has happened and it happens when it is triggered by a memory, a story, whatever. This woman was so torn apart by the reality of the situation that she just broke down in tears unprovoked. It was such a powerful moment that I didn't even know what to do. And all along this I'm sitting next to a German who is very sensative about her country's history. For those of you who don't know, as I was typing that I was hoping someone would let me tag along for the evening so I didn't have to make plans, Silvana was IMing me to ask if I'd like to go see a movie. I just fall into awesome situations sometimes. This was one of them. Other than my brand new $3,000 transmission crapping out on me and overheating on the way to NYC and the fact that I had no idea what to say after watching that movie, it was a great night. I don't know what I did to deserve such a great life. How many times in the average redneck life do you get to hang out with an Austrian, a Russian, and a German woman who are all super smart, beautiful, and fun as hell? Not much else a guy from Kentucky can ask for. (yes, asshole, I was born in kentucky and if it wasn't for the fact that I couldnt' make the money I make now in NJ or give my children the same quality of education if I was in Kentucky I'd have moved back to Kentucky years ago.[no I don't have any kids now... I don't even have a girlfriend]) So I've posted the few pictures I took last night on my flickr photostream. I'd love to post the picture of Silvana and I at the bar, but she is simply stunningly beautiful in the pic and I look like a fat necked loser with a creepy half smile. If you really must see it, just click on over to see them full size.
Another thing, how many women do you know that are beautiful, smart, and fun to hang out with? On top of that, how many of them bring a whole new perspective to life? I am lucky to have friends like this. For instance, we left the movie and we were all talking. Juliane, Verena, and Silvana were talking about how the enterance to Hiter's bunker is very hidden right now. They said it's basically a hotel and a garage where the doors used to be. In the movie it was shown as a big building with pillars outside. Then Silvana said, "Well, everything was destroyed, you never know. It might have looked like that back then. My whole town where I grew up was completely destroyed during WWII." I all of a sudden felt like a sheltered, ethnocentric, zero. This is a girl my age who grew up in a place where things we see on TV actually have happened. She lives in a town that was destroyed by war. I am thankful I've never experienced that, and I said so, but then I thought about all the bullshit social problems there are in this stupid country. Who the fuck cares about Terry Schiavo? She's dead. You know what? There are something like 35,000 other people just like her in this country right now. How does that make you feel? Should we keep her alive? I don't know. But does every single blog and news posting need to make references to her? No fucking way. It's like this, in colleges that are located in bad areas (Temple for one) the cops/security don't bust balls about underage drinking. At schools in great areas (Fairfield University) the security guards, cops, townspeople are always up in arms about drinking. Why? Because places like philadelphia have bigger problems to worry about than a stupid fucking case of beer. One of Silvana's friends looked me in the eye and said, "you sure you've never had one of your cities destroyed?" and I was stunned. Yes, 9/11 happened and we were attacked. Yes, that still makes me want to enlist and deal out my own retribution to the ones who know no other form of negotiaton. No, I've never sat in my house and talked with my elders about how the whole town was decimated by wave after wave of bombers and tanks. When you have a place like Germany who is still very much cogniscent about the past and a place like America where we are more concerned with a braindead woman and a news anchor's sex tapes than ANYTHING else it makes you wonder. Even though nobody should ever have to go through the horrors of war in their backyard, you have to think it keeps you focused on what's important in life.
The images I saw on that screen will stick with me for a long time. To think that this is based on truth (I'm not sure the extent of reality because I'm sure they took many liberties with the actual screenplay, but certain facts would be easy to validate. I won't do so because to know these things really can happen gives me a pain in my heart.) is just one of the most frightening and horrible things I've ever known. This feeling I have now is very similar to the feeling I got watching the first beheading video. I was talking with The Boston Strangler and he asked me 5 times before I'd answer, "Did you like the movie?" How do you say you like that? I can say it's an amazing film and that it was moving and scary and horrible and at the same time human and real, but to say I liked it would be like saying I like watching kids get beat or rape testimonies or a documentary on war crimes or any of the like. I am glad I saw it. It made it even more special to see it with someone who felt so strongly about the subject matter. Silvana forced me to come to grips with what I had just seen and be honest about it. Because I couldn't excape with a joke I had to talk through how I really felt. For a guy who evades most opportunities to show who I really am face to face by defusing tough situations with a joke, last night was an eye opener. To put it in it's most simple terms, I can't wait to hang out with her again. It was an amazing night for me intellectually and on top of that, it was a lot of fun.
So then we went to the bar. The first place we went to was some "invitation only" part at the Tribecca Grand Hotel. When I heard those words it made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I even said, "oh, I stayed there once." before it had totally sunk in WHY I stayed there. That was the first time I had met Beth's Dad and his soon-to-be wife. I came to the realization right there that even though I'm feeling ok about the whole thing and that I believe I"ve moved on by sheer necessity that I will still have moments where my heart races over some stupid reference or some holiday or some statement because my most recent memory of the stimulus will be with her. It's totally OK for me to feel like that from time to time. I am too rational (I almost said smart... dummy) to sit at home and be upset. I'm also too rational to think that there won't be pangs of consciousness where I'll remember her in inapropriate situations. Anyhoo... the tribecca grand had a huge line outside and even though Silvana's friends were on the list, Silvana and I were not, so we went to another place called, "The Bulgarian Cultural Center." It was a cool looking little bar with an enterance that looked like it was to either a whore house or crack dealer's pad. Inside the music was good and the air was super hot. I paid for Silvana and I to go in and then realized I should have checked my undertaker coat. Luckily for my poor sweat glands, Juliane and Verena didn't think it was worth the $10 cover so we got our money back and decided to just walk back toward my truck and find a place on the way. We ended up stopping in some little bar that only had a cover for dudes. Of course, as we were going in and one of them pulled out their whacky European ID some boy-band-sport-coat-and-jeans pretty boy who was either from France or stayed there a while recognized it and started talking with the girls. No matter what the situation, when you are a dude and a non-gay guy who is better looking has something personal and interesting to relate to with the girls you're with you get a little jealous. Moving on. So we go in and I offer to buy a round. What I ended up buying was a Jack and Coke (the drink of responsible drivers... it tastes too bad to drink quickly and thus I stay sober) and a diet coke for Silvana. I have to say, the DJ was interesting because he didn't play anything from outside the timeframe of 1999 and 2003 besides one song. On top of that, they were playing Napolean Dynomite on the TVs. It was a little place (and frequented by many Asians... that are little) and had a real cool vibe. I have NEVER considered just walking around manhatten until I found a bar to hang out at and when they said that's what we were doing I panicked. I kept it cool, but I just had this picture in my head of a pool cue being snapped in half over my face at some bar while the girls ran for the door. I'm just a country zero. These women are from all over europe and I live in NJ... why am I the one concerned with saftey? Anyways, Juliane and Verena wanted to go to another bar and Silvana was ready to go home. I had cleaned my truck until it was spotless for just this occasion. Unfortunatly, she has no clue how to get herself home by car. She doesn't drive and thus takes public transportation everywhere. A little side note: The girls heard me say I drive a truck and wanted to know what that was like. They didn't know what I meant by truck. They were picturing a semi. So now I'm walking with Silvana back to my truck and was going to offer to at least bring her to a subway station so she wouldn't have to walk alone, but there was one a half block from the garage, so we hugged, and she was off. I hopped in my truck, paid the $9 +$10 for a fullsize vehical and drove off. I didn't know how to get home and I didn't really care. I just hit the first highway that said West in front of it and drove. One of my things is that after a really great night, weekend, whatever, I don't really care if I know how to get home. I always figure it out, but I'm really in no hurry to get back to my life or to go to sleep and check off another day as complete.
I pulled my truck into the driveway at 5AM and couldn't turn the key off. I just sat and listened to the radio another 10 minutes before killing the motor and going back to my room. I hopped in AIM hoping there was someone I could chat wiht for a minute before going to bed, but it was 5:30AM so I just uploaded the pictures in my camera and went to sleep. I was laying in bed and couldn't stop the switch in my brain from going between beautiful fun images from the bar and the walks and the horrible stuff that happened in the movie. All in all I drifted off to sleep with good memories of a night that moved me to really feel something. You don't get that everyday and I'm happy it happened.
Now to make this post even longer, I took a few stupid tests on quiz websites to pass the time today and here are the results:
Coding is messed up for both images, so you get the boring version:
Redneck test results: 55% redneck. You're just about as welcome up in town as a hair in a biscuit. Ain't no hidin' your redneck roots!
The next quiz was to see what John Huges character I'd be... I came out:
You are Ferris Bueller (from Ferris Bueller's Day Off)! You're a smooth talker and a resourceful, quick thinker, and you play by your own rules. Fortunately, you use such things for fun and not to hurt anyone else. God only knows what would happen if you crossed paths with Lisa from Weird Science
I talked with Katherine via IM on Friday and she clicked over to this mess of a blog for the first time. The first thing she said after reading for a while was that I sound a lot like Holden Caufield from Catcher in the Rye. I loved that book and it was a really nice thing to hear. I like to think I'm a good writter, so hearing myself compared to the writting style of one of the greatest authors ever was very very cool. [please note I described the compliment to my writting style as "very very cool."]
Tonight is slated to be a night out in Morristown with the boys. Pray for Mongo.
Another thing, how many women do you know that are beautiful, smart, and fun to hang out with? On top of that, how many of them bring a whole new perspective to life? I am lucky to have friends like this. For instance, we left the movie and we were all talking. Juliane, Verena, and Silvana were talking about how the enterance to Hiter's bunker is very hidden right now. They said it's basically a hotel and a garage where the doors used to be. In the movie it was shown as a big building with pillars outside. Then Silvana said, "Well, everything was destroyed, you never know. It might have looked like that back then. My whole town where I grew up was completely destroyed during WWII." I all of a sudden felt like a sheltered, ethnocentric, zero. This is a girl my age who grew up in a place where things we see on TV actually have happened. She lives in a town that was destroyed by war. I am thankful I've never experienced that, and I said so, but then I thought about all the bullshit social problems there are in this stupid country. Who the fuck cares about Terry Schiavo? She's dead. You know what? There are something like 35,000 other people just like her in this country right now. How does that make you feel? Should we keep her alive? I don't know. But does every single blog and news posting need to make references to her? No fucking way. It's like this, in colleges that are located in bad areas (Temple for one) the cops/security don't bust balls about underage drinking. At schools in great areas (Fairfield University) the security guards, cops, townspeople are always up in arms about drinking. Why? Because places like philadelphia have bigger problems to worry about than a stupid fucking case of beer. One of Silvana's friends looked me in the eye and said, "you sure you've never had one of your cities destroyed?" and I was stunned. Yes, 9/11 happened and we were attacked. Yes, that still makes me want to enlist and deal out my own retribution to the ones who know no other form of negotiaton. No, I've never sat in my house and talked with my elders about how the whole town was decimated by wave after wave of bombers and tanks. When you have a place like Germany who is still very much cogniscent about the past and a place like America where we are more concerned with a braindead woman and a news anchor's sex tapes than ANYTHING else it makes you wonder. Even though nobody should ever have to go through the horrors of war in their backyard, you have to think it keeps you focused on what's important in life.
The images I saw on that screen will stick with me for a long time. To think that this is based on truth (I'm not sure the extent of reality because I'm sure they took many liberties with the actual screenplay, but certain facts would be easy to validate. I won't do so because to know these things really can happen gives me a pain in my heart.) is just one of the most frightening and horrible things I've ever known. This feeling I have now is very similar to the feeling I got watching the first beheading video. I was talking with The Boston Strangler and he asked me 5 times before I'd answer, "Did you like the movie?" How do you say you like that? I can say it's an amazing film and that it was moving and scary and horrible and at the same time human and real, but to say I liked it would be like saying I like watching kids get beat or rape testimonies or a documentary on war crimes or any of the like. I am glad I saw it. It made it even more special to see it with someone who felt so strongly about the subject matter. Silvana forced me to come to grips with what I had just seen and be honest about it. Because I couldn't excape with a joke I had to talk through how I really felt. For a guy who evades most opportunities to show who I really am face to face by defusing tough situations with a joke, last night was an eye opener. To put it in it's most simple terms, I can't wait to hang out with her again. It was an amazing night for me intellectually and on top of that, it was a lot of fun.
So then we went to the bar. The first place we went to was some "invitation only" part at the Tribecca Grand Hotel. When I heard those words it made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I even said, "oh, I stayed there once." before it had totally sunk in WHY I stayed there. That was the first time I had met Beth's Dad and his soon-to-be wife. I came to the realization right there that even though I'm feeling ok about the whole thing and that I believe I"ve moved on by sheer necessity that I will still have moments where my heart races over some stupid reference or some holiday or some statement because my most recent memory of the stimulus will be with her. It's totally OK for me to feel like that from time to time. I am too rational (I almost said smart... dummy) to sit at home and be upset. I'm also too rational to think that there won't be pangs of consciousness where I'll remember her in inapropriate situations. Anyhoo... the tribecca grand had a huge line outside and even though Silvana's friends were on the list, Silvana and I were not, so we went to another place called, "The Bulgarian Cultural Center." It was a cool looking little bar with an enterance that looked like it was to either a whore house or crack dealer's pad. Inside the music was good and the air was super hot. I paid for Silvana and I to go in and then realized I should have checked my undertaker coat. Luckily for my poor sweat glands, Juliane and Verena didn't think it was worth the $10 cover so we got our money back and decided to just walk back toward my truck and find a place on the way. We ended up stopping in some little bar that only had a cover for dudes. Of course, as we were going in and one of them pulled out their whacky European ID some boy-band-sport-coat-and-jeans pretty boy who was either from France or stayed there a while recognized it and started talking with the girls. No matter what the situation, when you are a dude and a non-gay guy who is better looking has something personal and interesting to relate to with the girls you're with you get a little jealous. Moving on. So we go in and I offer to buy a round. What I ended up buying was a Jack and Coke (the drink of responsible drivers... it tastes too bad to drink quickly and thus I stay sober) and a diet coke for Silvana. I have to say, the DJ was interesting because he didn't play anything from outside the timeframe of 1999 and 2003 besides one song. On top of that, they were playing Napolean Dynomite on the TVs. It was a little place (and frequented by many Asians... that are little) and had a real cool vibe. I have NEVER considered just walking around manhatten until I found a bar to hang out at and when they said that's what we were doing I panicked. I kept it cool, but I just had this picture in my head of a pool cue being snapped in half over my face at some bar while the girls ran for the door. I'm just a country zero. These women are from all over europe and I live in NJ... why am I the one concerned with saftey? Anyways, Juliane and Verena wanted to go to another bar and Silvana was ready to go home. I had cleaned my truck until it was spotless for just this occasion. Unfortunatly, she has no clue how to get herself home by car. She doesn't drive and thus takes public transportation everywhere. A little side note: The girls heard me say I drive a truck and wanted to know what that was like. They didn't know what I meant by truck. They were picturing a semi. So now I'm walking with Silvana back to my truck and was going to offer to at least bring her to a subway station so she wouldn't have to walk alone, but there was one a half block from the garage, so we hugged, and she was off. I hopped in my truck, paid the $9 +$10 for a fullsize vehical and drove off. I didn't know how to get home and I didn't really care. I just hit the first highway that said West in front of it and drove. One of my things is that after a really great night, weekend, whatever, I don't really care if I know how to get home. I always figure it out, but I'm really in no hurry to get back to my life or to go to sleep and check off another day as complete.
I pulled my truck into the driveway at 5AM and couldn't turn the key off. I just sat and listened to the radio another 10 minutes before killing the motor and going back to my room. I hopped in AIM hoping there was someone I could chat wiht for a minute before going to bed, but it was 5:30AM so I just uploaded the pictures in my camera and went to sleep. I was laying in bed and couldn't stop the switch in my brain from going between beautiful fun images from the bar and the walks and the horrible stuff that happened in the movie. All in all I drifted off to sleep with good memories of a night that moved me to really feel something. You don't get that everyday and I'm happy it happened.
Now to make this post even longer, I took a few stupid tests on quiz websites to pass the time today and here are the results:
Coding is messed up for both images, so you get the boring version:
Redneck test results: 55% redneck. You're just about as welcome up in town as a hair in a biscuit. Ain't no hidin' your redneck roots!
The next quiz was to see what John Huges character I'd be... I came out:
You are Ferris Bueller (from Ferris Bueller's Day Off)! You're a smooth talker and a resourceful, quick thinker, and you play by your own rules. Fortunately, you use such things for fun and not to hurt anyone else. God only knows what would happen if you crossed paths with Lisa from Weird Science
I talked with Katherine via IM on Friday and she clicked over to this mess of a blog for the first time. The first thing she said after reading for a while was that I sound a lot like Holden Caufield from Catcher in the Rye. I loved that book and it was a really nice thing to hear. I like to think I'm a good writter, so hearing myself compared to the writting style of one of the greatest authors ever was very very cool. [please note I described the compliment to my writting style as "very very cool."]
Tonight is slated to be a night out in Morristown with the boys. Pray for Mongo.
posted by NJX70 at 3:16 PM
1 Comments:
Hmm, I am amazed you spelled our names right. Please don't sell yourself short - we also had a great time w/you. And GREAT WRITING!
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