So I’m continuing to finish up this blog sequence in NYC, mostly because I started all these posts and didn’t finish them, but also because I just hate leaving something unfinished. Just a few more to go.
It’s funny, I took so much French in high school and college and I remember squat. Sure, I still know words for lots of food items of course, and pleasantries and necessities and how to ask where the train station is, ou est le gare?, and how to ask for some other things, voulez-vous couchez avec moi, c’est soir, and I can probably sort of read it okay still, but speak it? Understand it? And now with this whole Spanish language swimming around in my head, when I mean to say “merci”, “gracias” just pops out.
When I arrived in Paris, I had to get to that gas station from the airport, via public transportation, of course, because we all know there was no way I was taking a cab. Buying bus tickets and metro tickets, asking questions, I totally took that for granted in Spain, that’s the easy stuff for me. So now I just keep speaking Spanish. Not even English. Even when I want to say “excuse me”…in English, I say “perdon” instead. It’s like my brain knows I have to speak a different language than English and shifts right into Spanish. Which is a good thing, right? You know, for my Spanish. Not very useful in France. Or Greece.
Quick aside, I’m meeting my friend at this cute tapas place we like on the upper west side and they have txakoli! I can’t believe it! Did I never notice this on menus before??
Okay, so I don’t speak French. And all these people in France do, except, thankfully, the bartenders in Cafe Oz, a huge Australian bar near the Denfert-Rocherau metro station that let me use their wifi to make some Skype calls. This was the beginning of my work week in Switzerland, or France. I still wasn’t sure.
My friend Max started a business a few years ago and generously let me work from his really cool office. Located in a technology park in St. Genis Pouilly, a French suburb of Geneva, his company provides full-service
That’s it. That’s apparently all I had to say or maybe I fell asleep while I was typing. Who knows? This is a post I started last August and…Just. Stopped. Typing. And now I’m misusing blockquotes.
It’s so funny that I was jonesing to blog about traveling right at this very moment and when I logged in to clean up and turn off all the freakin’ porn comments I get from China and Russia and maybe write a little bit, I found this and it just made me laugh at my very sorry-ass attempt at getting any kind of bloggin’ groove on … anyway, my other motivation to blog (MTB), besides working from a city I don’t live in, is that my friend’s daughter’s friend is backpacking through Europe for two months and she gave him my contact info a few weeks so we have been emailing about his upcoming trip (which I think he might have just started, go Chris, maybe I’ll see you in San Sebastian!!!) and I got all nostalgic and jealous and nostalgic and antsy and nostalgic and hungry so now I’m in a cute tapas bar in Charlotte with a dose of the deja vus (blabla car=Uber, pintxos=tapas, txakoli=rioja, Charlotte=well, Charlotte, but hey I could be in northern Spain). Check out that chorizo and tortilla española!
So I’m not even going to try and finish that sentence from last August, except to say that it doesn’t end with “massages” or “escorts”. But I am going to start a new summer of blogging (SOB) with a great weekend of shooting and shooting and driving. Yes, driving. And shooting. And shooting.
First, the shooting.
I came down to the Charlotte area to visit my dear friend, Ben and his family and to star in a film short they are shooting in Monroe, NC. Okay, so I’m not the star. But I am in it. Described briefly as a “grim crime film” (and I wish I remember what Hunter said to me on our drive in today…something something something Quentin Tarantino something something something), it’s a very original screenplay by Ben and his son Hunter, produced by Hunter, directed by Ben and starring me. Okay, it’s not starring me, but I am in it. And I had the best day yesterday with great local talent shooting at Buddy’s Point in Monroe, NC. I feel so honored and privileged to be included, I really do, thanks guys! So much fun.
And now, the shooting.
I shot guns. Big shotguns. And beautiful pistols. And I aimed at shit with my wonky left-eye-right-handed handicap and ripped some very nice holes in some pesky laundry detergent bottles. Thank you so much Ben, Bethanne, Hunter and Trace for making something that in general terrifies me to the core feel so safe and so freakin’ awesomely bad ass at the same time (by the way, Trace, you best boom boy you, you have taught me all I know about Cinch and bullet gauges and I will include you in my Oscar acceptance speech, which I expect to win for my deft portrayal of a woman who can spin herself from the top of a bar to the back of it faster than she can flip the tab of a beer can…uncanny!)
And yes, there was driving.
Oh yeah. I drove. A car. On a two-way road! And it wasn’t in an arcade! Okay, there was not ONE OTHER CAR on the road and NOT ONE PERSON, HORSE, DOG OR PIG strolling along the South Carolina border. And it was after I shot up all that plastic and the triple-man-silhouette thing so I was definitely on some kind of weird I-will-do-everything-that-terrifies-me-that-I-overthink-about-way-too-much in a 4-hour time-period high. By the way, this is about as close to manic as I get. Of course, Ben talked me into it, how does he do that? It didn’t hurt that he has a very cool new GI Joe car. And that it’s green. I like green. And that I just shot a whole bunch of guns with real big bullets and didn’t even kill the Snuggle bunny. But I don’t think I’ve tried to drive a car since I was maybe 19? 21 the oldest and it wasn’t good. I dunno, it just didn’t take as long as I thought it would to convince me to do it. He kind of pushed me out of the passenger seat and said “Go.” “Drive.”
So I went. And drove. For like 5 minutes. I accelerated a little and honestly, it wasn’t all that scary. Just like my recurring dreams where I drive on long open roads and tight city streets, licenseless and free. And it was reassuring that Ben wasn’t the least bit worried that I’d lose control of the wheel, the gas pedal or my mind. What a brave, brave, brave man.
Best of luck Hunter, Ben and crew, thanks again and I think you need to find a few more lines for Bizzie, no one can deliver a better “big boy”.
