Bush Jumping

This started in Biarritz, but there were a lot of pictures on that last post, so I figured I'd split it up and make a post about this.

The title explains it pretty well. We find some nicely groomed bushes with a lot of leaves that look very inviting, and we jump into them. The usual technique for jumping into bushes is running full speed at the bushes then jumping with a 180 degree turn on the x axis and a 90 degree turn on the y axis so that you land on your back on the soft mattress of spikes. However, there is also the usual front flip which results in your ass being penetrated by multiple shafts upon impact.

This is super fun, but it causes a lot of scratches, rips, and loss of personal property, which sucks. I lost mp3 player and I just ripped my new sweatshirt.

I know I'm a dumbass, but whatever.

Biarritz

So it's been a while since we were in Biarritz, but we didn't get the opportunity to post anything about it, so I am now. Biarritz was the shit basically. We sat on the beach all day, we slept on the beach at night, went swimming in the ocean, saw titties (old titties are gross), drank beer on the beach, what more could you ask for? (Besides the old tits part). Brock was supposed to make the post about the karaoke bar that we went to, but he didn't so I'm doing it for him. Brock wanted Glenn and me to sing some karaoke, so he bought both of us a beer then picked a song...

"Barbie Girl" by Aqua

Pretty much Glenn and I made jackasses of ourselves (more so than the people that were actually trying to sing karaoke well) We screwed up the song in multiple places, I rocked the shit out of the oooos and yeahs and ahhhs while Glenn sat there laughing trying at random times to make a ken voice and occasionally he tried to sing some of the words that appeared on the screen, but over all (and I feel like a jackass saying this in a post because I'm writing it) I rocked the shit out of Glenn, and I wouldn't have said anything, but everyone else agreed that Glenn sucks at karaoke.

But yeah, Biarritz was amazing. So here are some pictures that sum up our experience there fairly well.

Wood Floors in the New Apartment

As a further extension of my efforts in delivering a crushing antithesis to everything that the naysayers stand for I must report to our readership our current living arrangments.

We have an incredible apartment.

Can´t Tell Me Nothin

The following post is dedicated to the naysayers. It has been crafted in memory of all of the snarky comments insisting that we would be back in a month. This one goes out to every by the book know-it-all who was somehow affiliated with some esoteric knowledge of Europe that insisted that there was no way we could ever find jobs.

All of these people are idiots.

After about a week here in Spain we all have jobs, the five us are now English professors.



Game us, naysayers kill yourselves.

Flashing Lights

We have been in Madrid for a week now, and for the most part it has been an uneventful week. Now I know the negative connotations that the word "uneventful" carries and I need to dispel those with all possible. It has been deeply satisfying to sit on our asses all day every day, a welcome break from the busy pace that we had been keeping.


Regardless of how you feel about the word "uneventful", Friday night fucking shattered any notions of that particular adjective having anything to do with the city of Madrid, and after the shattering, the tattered pieces were swiftly crushed into a fine dust. The dust was then jettisoned into the furthest reaches of space, never to be seen or heard from again.

We decided to go clubbing.


Madrid is an optimal destination for the raccoons and vampires among our readers (Vampyres? Jon?) in that it really comes alive at night. In the downtown area the streets stay pretty much packed from about 11PM till 5 or 6AM. Amidst the pedestrians that fill the streets there are countless solicitors, patient vultures who perch on corners with fliers and eager eyes, ready to preach to you about whatever club, or brothel, has employed them.

Their efforts were in vain however, as Adam and I had done a little bit of research earlier and already picked our destination for the night. The five of us could not be deterred as we walked steadily downhill to the club, Joy. When we at last arrived, we hung out near the entrance for a couple of minutes, debating whether or not the it was full enough to be enjoyable(No pun intended, I swear that shit was an accident).


We decided against entering at that moment, as it was only about 12:30. So we continued our walk down to Sol, one of the many plazas that people gather at when the night comes. There was some strange event going on there which I still don't understand. About sixty people had formed a circle around a few attention starved jackasses that were parading around with thongs on, wielding dildos, and pretending to engage in lewd sexual acts with each other.

It wasn't funny.


The thing that the people didn't realize was that no less than 20 feet away from them something truly hilarious was happening. Some enterprising bum had apparently grown tired of endlessly degrading himself asking people for change, and realized that payphones had tons of change idly resting in their depths. It was determined that the optimal tool for obtaining said change was the payphone itself.

This money hungry son of the gutter was maniacally smashing the receiver against the box with every ounce of force he could muster. I wouldn't imagine that such a man could muster up much force, as I'm sure his feeble diet consisted of little more than bread crumbs flavored only by the stench of piss surrounding him and bingo tickets with ketchup on them. But he wanted that fucking money and he wasn't going to stop.


While I was watching this, Brock was being befriended by a couple of questionable Brazilian fellows that kept offering him free drinks that they concocted right there in the plaza. I was weary of these gentlemen, but they had gained the attention of the rest of the group, so I entered in the fray, offering up my meager knowledge of Spanish, meeting them halfway with their substandard English.

We told them what we were up to, and it seemed as good of a time as any to go to the club, so we began the short trek to Joy. When we got their we learned that there was a guest list. This brief moment of panic was remedied when the Brazilians offered up another location. We didn't know any better so we agreed.
We got to the door and paid fifteen euros to get in, a steep price partly due to the free drink ticket it included-useless to me for obvious reasons. We climbed the stairs and upon our entrance to the first room, this club was immediately disappointing.


The lights were impressive and the music was decent enough, but the room was filled with people who at the very least were a decade older than ourselves. The small dance floor was populated with thirty and forty somethings gyrating mildly in a last ditch attempt to masquerade youth and vitality. We all exchanged "What the fuck?"s for a couple of minutes before slipping into one of the many side rooms.

We posted up in this room for a bit, wondering what to do next, and soon enough the Great Goosby had attracted the attention of some chick. They talked for a bit, and I think it was during this time that Joel wandered off further into the depths of the club to see if he couldn't find something more suitable for us.
Joel returned with a fervent pitch insisting that he had found a satisfactory room. We followed him, as anything had to be better than the room we were in, and he was absolutely right. We had finally escaped from the geriatric shuffling of rooms past, and found our home. Glenn eventually followed with his new friend in tow, and we were introduced to her friends, a handful of lovely girls from London who were on a trip for a Spanish class. It turns out the girl Glenn was hitting on was their teacher, and she was 27.


We stayed with these girls for the rest of the night, and I have to say it was much better than our clubbing experience in London. The only problem was that the club was playing mostly Spanish club tracks, which often break down into a series of clicks and clacks just barely resembling percussion, severely reducing the low chances of us not looking like jackasses when we were dancing.

Also, while we were at the club we met a couple of guys, Chris and Jonah.




That's right, fucking McLovin and Seth.


Superbad had premiered in Spain a couple of days earlier so they were there doing promotional stuff. We would go over to the area that were hanging out in throughout the night and check up on them, talk for about fifteen minutes then go back to dancing. The funny shit was that Chris (McLovin) is pretty much the same person in real life as was in Superbad. Honest to God, his voice actually sounds like that. They were completely willing to sit around and talk shit with us, even though I would imagine that it wasn't that exciting for them.


So there you have it, we danced all night long with some cute British girls, hung out with McLovin (fucking McLovin!), and finally went home at 5AM. When we were half a block away from the hostel Joel stopped to piss in some alley. I sat on the steps of the metro stop waiting for him, and some enchanting Spanish girl said something to me that I didn't understand.


I pleaded her to repeat it for me, but I still didn't comprehend whatever she was trying to convey. She walked off into the night as I tried to decipher the message, but it was no use.

Joel finished pissing, I still wondered what she said, and at last the night was over.

Garbage Bodies

So we´ve been in the same hostel in Madrid for about a week now and I feel like I need to describe the interior of the room that we have spent a majority of our time in. It is a fairly small room with one bunk bed and three other beds crammed tightly into a small amount of space. So, with that, our huge backpacks, and us... there isn´t much room for anything else.

Except garbage.

The amount of garbage that we managed to pack into that room is ridiculous. There´s a supermarket right up the street that has a ton of cheap food and drinks, so we go there all the time. The amount of bread crumbs (Glenn´s broke ass sucks at eating fucking bread.), 2 liter fanta bottles, chip bags, Doo Wop wrappers, and other miscellaneous items was ridiculous. I managed to fill about 7 grocery bags almost to the bursting point, but there was still more. The lady at the hostel walked in one day and started laughing at all the trash we accumulated. And then we took it out, because we felt like bastards, only to have it reappear a couple days later.

But the main point of this story is garbage bodies. Due to the large amount of garbage, multiple times one of our beloved crew members has laid down on a bed, then when he stands up, he has a multitude of small pieces of garbage that have molded to his body. The best example is Brendan. Brendan sat up after reading or something and had created a breadcrumb farm on his back with a nice little tinfoil ball barn burrowed into his skin right below his shoulder. That is when the term ¨Garbage Bodies¨was coined.

Masterpiece Before the Curtains

As was mentioned in an earlier post, the Rugby World Cup is currently taking place in France. As I'm sure you can imagine, there a many festivities surrounding these events. One of these is the massive screens situated around Paris that display the matches.

During our time in Paris, we were lucky enough to attend the screening of a game between France and the New Zealand All Blacks team. New Zealand was the favored winner and from the few rumblings I had heard about the match things did not look well for France.

We climbed out of the subway station at the Hotel De Ville, whose massive courtyard was filled with the most people I have ever seen in my life. Everywhere around there were Rugby zealots with flags on there faces and in their hands. We began the arduous process of finding a place to sit among the massive crowds.

I will spare you all the actual details of the match, except the fact that we won. I feel kind of like a moron saying "we" as I am not French by any means, but sitting there with all those people around, erupting with them every time France scored a goal, booing the New Zealand team, and ultimately enjoying the pinnacle of the celebration when the game had ended as champagne bottles sprayed all around and flares lit up the night, I felt like I sure as hell wanted to be.

We waited after the game as the crowds dissipated, then we walked off into the night heading off to a party in celebration of the beautiful victory. The streets were alive, flooded with joyous pedestrians who still chanted the praises of the team and cars that utilized their horns to the fullest extent.

Friendly people walked around us and told us all about themselves while bombarding us with questions. It was a beautiful night.

We finally arrived at the apartment of a girl named Alta, daughter of the French playwright Yasmina Reza. The party that ensued was massively delightful. For the most of the night I sat there watching people dance.

They fucking danced all night long. It was beautiful. Watching them move around I felt like I was surrounded by the classic, romantic, fantasy France. That apartment was some romantic time capsule with scenes that played out like the massive canvas paintings in the Louvre.

Thank you to all the the people from that night, the gregarious Pianist, Vincent-who may be the best dancer in the world, the sultry couple who passionately threw each other around on the dance floor, the two girls who stepped perfectly with together, Alice of course, the young man who loved Queen, and everyone else.