it's over. move to somnia.

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I Want to Be Zorro

...for Halloween. I don't really know why. Well, besides the facts that he looks pretty cool (and he's a magical mythopoetic figure in Mexamerican history, lookin' out for the little guy). I just can't find the right kind of hat. Or a whip.* Italians sort of play along with the whole Halloween thing, putting up decorations in most shops (from caffes to copisterias), but it's hard to find a costume superstore. Or just a costume store, seeing as it's pretty hard to find ANY kind of superstore around here. Except Ikea...mmmmm. Maybe I should go there.

Anyway, the school's having a party tomorrow night, and we (200 strong) have invited the foreign students' association (1000 strong) at the main university to share a place that holds 600 people. Yeah, that'll be fun. And given our love of partying, the fact that the holiday lands on a Friday this year is gonna be crazy.

*I've been told that a sword would be more accurate, but I want a whip, dammit!
peachy as always, Mike at 8:02 AM

 
Hold Your Peace

I almost got into a bar fight last night. A large group of us were at the Scuderia, a ridiculously big bar with a hilariously awful cover band, celebrating my classmate Allison's birthday. I was chatting with an acquaintance (X) who introduced me to a friend of his (Y) who is in town for the weekend. Y was bragging about how he'd taken X to a strip club the night before, which...well, X is married with a small child. Maybe it's cool with everyone involved, I don't know. Jokingly, I flicked him on the forehead and reprimanded his for his bad influence. We went on talking about whatever else. About ten minutes later, Y suddenly turned to me and said, "Don't you touch me again."

"What?"
"You touch me again and I'll beat you to a bloody pulp."
"Really? You know, I'm bigger than you." Y is a good six to eight inches shorter than me. Probably wasn't the best thing to say, but I'd had a couple of beers.
"Come on. Let's go outside. I'll beat you to a bloody pulp." He was smiling, but serious. I reflected.
I turned to X and asked, "Just how drunk is he?"
"On a scale of 1 to 10...I'd say about a 3." X was amused. I wasn't.

Y repeated his threat again, but hadn't yet put up his dukes. The thing is, I was severely tempted to just pop him one right there, break his nose, let him have it. I've never been in a fistfight, but it sounds exhilarating. Still, I guess in the end I'm a fairly mature person: I just turned and walked away.


Oh, I also spent most of the day in Venice. That was nice.
peachy as always, Mike at 12:39 PM

 
Yes, There Is Something Very Wrong with That

Went to a club last night. Link. It was pretty cool: a massive old warehouse, with four big rooms featuring different music/lighting/enviro atmospheres. And since it was the opening night for the 2003-04 season (everything--even nightclubs--closes for the summer here; it sucks), the cover was pay-what-you-wish...which everyone knows means €1.

Dario--my conveniently-Italian roommate--and I arrived at 11:30 pm. Dead. A few dozen people (which in this space was nothing) were milling about, but the music hadn't even been turned on or the lights lowered. We decided to go find a bar down the street (as a general rule in Italy, there is always a bar down the street) and hang out there until the club got hoppin'.

It was a nice bar: well-lit, convivial. Young people, mostly; a good male/female mix. There was even a waiter to lead us to our table. (When we sat down, he put kids' junior-jumble placemats in front of us--you know the kind, with a crossword and connect-the-dots and find-the-differences-between-these-pictures...cute.) The group at the next table over were playing Jenga. We ordered our beers and started chatting.

And then I looked up at the TV screens.

Hentai.

Now, I've never seen hentai before, and I wouldn't even know the word if it hadn't been for a brief mention on a friend's website (you know who you are), but I'd heard it described in that "oh, those Japanese" way, and I thought it sounded pretty silly. Animated porn, featuring bosomy women with monsters and...well, monster accessories. And the requisite ick. It wasn't until Dario caught my attention ("Mike. Mike. HEY.") that I snapped out of it.

"You should see some of the faces you're making." (My jaw had literally dropped, it seems.)
"What the fuck is this? Why is no one else freaking out?"
"I don't know. I've never seen anything like this before either." He started to laugh. I should mention that both the screens in my line of sight were behind him, which was completely unfair.
"What the--OH my GOD." (You don't want to know.)
"Maybe you should just stop looking."
"But..."
"You know, as long as everyone in here is over 18, it's legal." (Dario is, by the way, a lawyer.)
"But... But..."

At that moment, the waiter came by to offer us free shots (of something) followed with a grape. He was more impressed that I was from California ("My grandmother, she lives in L.A.!") than anything else I had to say.

Every day, another mindbender. Oh, yay.
peachy as always, Mike at 2:37 PM