Lou Reed & the Radicals

Going to the Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures exhibition in Rudolfinum, Prague had affected me more than I anticipated. I indeed expected to like it. In the days to follow, it had, however, had some unexpected major influences.

Fist off, it made me have a closer look on Lou Reed. After having a long, amazed stare at him, sunglasses and a Coke bottle in one of Warhol's Screen Tests, I'm actually listening to his music while writing this.

More notably to anyone but my iPod, me and my friends have made fun of the program: I really liked the movies, but calling Empire daring, experimental and radical....OK, maybe experimental (no one has done a thing like that before) and daring (publicly showing a movie like that sure is daring), but radical? We went on to how ridiculous the proliferation of the word 'radical' is .

The next 2 days, me and those radical-mocking friends were making a movie for a competition. For lack of a better name we called our group 'Radical Art' and turned the movie in just hours before the deadline (the name of our group and the movie were the two things we were most dissatisfied with). Now it seems that there will be some sort of fancy event for this competition and we will be asked questions of the "What-does-that-name-mean?" sort. Since it obviously came up as a joke, we will hopefully elaborate several seriously sounding theories.)

We Salute You!

Unbelievably lucky as I got, I went to see the AC/DC concert in Prague!!!! Can you think of a better way to celebrate St. Patty's day?

But let me start from the top (considering AC/DC, that would be 1973, so maybe I should've said 'this Monday'). In order to actually see AC/DC, I went to get contact lenses. To a proud capitalist - like myself - this could sound easy, but our beloved 'come, choose, pay and go' doesn't work (or at least didn't work for me) when sticking something right onto your eyeball is involved. Luckily for me, the optician also understood the simplistic beauty of 'do your job and enjoy the money'. Or maybe I'm cynical and she really loves trying to keep people from blinking while inserting stuff into their eyes. Anyway, she was incredibly nice and kept cheering me on. After countless tries, I saw the world bright and sharp without glasses again (after....mm,..well, a loong time). It took me unbelievably more tries (unbelievably more than countless.... go logic!) to be able to take the lenses out and put them back in myself (with the optician navigating).

The next day I got as usual(i.e. 6 AM).... to spend about 40 minutes hopelessly trying to stuck those lenses where they belong (that's into my eyes, if anyone's wondering). I succeeded at the cost of cutting down my breakfast time to one inconveniently approaching zero.

The concert itself was unbelievable, something my poor writing skills can never describe. Something one has to hear and see. They are just amazing, aged 61(Brian), 53(Angus) 56(Malcolm), 59(Cliff) and 54(Phil), they gave a 2-hour performance full of pure rock'n'roll damnation, which nobody wanted to end. The band rocked their hearts out and we wanted to stay on the highway to hell forever. I could go on for hours, talking about the video that the show started with, me and the guy sitting next to me jumping from our seats to shout that we are back in black, dynamites and that we win the fight, that we salute to those about to rock. Which was the last thing we got to shout, because after "We salute you, Prague" the band left the second and final time, leaving the fans nothing to complain about. Unless you'd have preferred Czech flag to the AC/DC logo as it appeared on Angus' underpants during his traditional striptease......

Looking like I've cried all night was definitely worth it. ;)

Dolomiti Superski

Spending a week at a wonderful skiing resort has yielded a lot more than enjoying endless slopes (you start at 3340 m above sea level and end at 1500).

Firstly, we didn't get to ski as much as we expected and wanted due to bad weather. First 2 days were amazing, but then it fogged up and stayed that way for 4 days. The first two of these we skied, but it wasn't really enjoyable (you have no idea where you are and where the slope is.....). The following 2 days, the resort was closed because of bad conditions (now accompanied by avalanche danger, since it had snowed heavily). The last day of or stay, the sky cleared up but it was rather windy. And an avalanche fell on the slope.

But my brother has come up with some exiting scientific ideas. Although my personal inclination goes the other way, I have to admit that avalanche power plant is a much better idea than, say, a fish night light (shh, a million $ idea).

When he shared his idea with us (sitting on a chairlift), he looked like he was expecting a delegation from Sweden announcing his Nobel Price nomination to be waiting for him up the hill. He also absolutely ignored our lack of faith in his project and turned down every objection we made (sample dialogue: "you're gonna built a super expensive power plant and hope that an avalanche will come exactly where you built it" - "I'll make it moveable").

I have also collected some data that contribute to my 'never get married' theory. I shared a king-size bed with my mother and that is as close to marriage as I shall ever get. The selfish need for OWN BLANKET outweighs everything.

me, the trip-to-Sweden expectant and beautiful mountains

The Postcard Conflict

Having sent about a dozen postcards in the past few days, my old theories about postcards have reemerged. Every time I go somewhere, I promise to send about a dozen postcards and I usually keep my word, but the process is very painful. Schoolwork (like a 30-minute presentation or a 4-page book project) is ridiculously facile compared to a few-line postcard.

Nobody has been able to explain to me what the whole point of writing something was. I would assume that the picture is enough. The recipient gets an idea of where you are, and you can relate all the funny stories later (they are usually too long to be written on a postcard anyway). The recipient is also not interested in facts, statistics or anything of this sort; even if it relates to the place you're at, and even if they would get a better picture of the place, it's at least unusual to give a full weather report as it is on dolomiti.it or elsewhere (not to mention, the postcard is too small for that as well). Whoever reeds a postcard is looking for a subjective evaluation. That's where the problem comes from.

Basically, you have two options: "it rocks" and "it sucks", both of which suck. Whichever you choose, you can't avoid an outcome rather unpleasant for the reader. With the "it rocks" option, what you tell them is "hey, this is awesome, I'm enjoying this wonderful place while you're at school/work". Once you realize this, you try to make your wonderful vacation look a bit less amazing, but what you get is about: "hey, I know that you're currently laboring over spreadsheets and your boss is a stubborn bitch, but this vacation totally sucks, we have only a 3-course dinner and thai massages are extra".

However, I acknowledge the romantic nostalgia of hand-written (and therefore almost unreadable) cards as opposed to facebook/flickr albums and e-cards. In some weird, twisted self-torturing way, I like sending postcards. So please, approach them with understanding and forgiveness, you will be rewarded another upsetting piece of my scribble soon.