The story so far...

Time for a "trip so far" picture. Actually this masterfully created graphic takes us from knoxvile, where we last checked in, to Nashville, Atlanta then onto Los Angeles and San Diego, which is where I plan to be around Sunday. Possible Saturday if I'm not too hung over. Note: the Mint Green dot is where I need to be on June 9th for Bonnaroo. Details, details.

Marvels of Nature

I have decided to grow my right pinky toe. The idea occurred to me after about 3 weeks away when I realised a) my toenails were in desperate need of trimming and b) my pinky toes have never been this long. Ever.

Here's my first progress report:

And yes, I am fully aware of both the ridiculousness of toes and specifically of my toes.

Today's number one feeling was brought to you by the art of puppetry and by the artist Jim Henson.

Finally! Puppets! 

I can now leave Atlanta knowing I've seen the best it has to offer. The Center for Puppetry Arts did me so right. If only it was in Canadia so i could woo them into hiring me.

I arrived at 11:30, just as a show was starting. It was called The Little Pirate Mermaid and was basically Disney's The Little Mermaid in puppets with more pirates and a less attractive sea-witch.

I absolutely adore seeing children's theatre with actual children in the audience. Their reactions are so vocal and innocent. There was a part near the beginning where Aerial/Molly had just fished the pirate captain out of the sea and she was all like "a kiss from a mermaid will bring him back to health". There was a giant "Eeewwwww" from the kids in the audience. Also when the puppeteers came out to take their bows, the audience went silent for a whole five seconds as the kids were figuring out who the G.D. these people in black were.

The bestest bit was when the pirates became "The Helpful Pirates" and helped a lost starfish by giving him a map. All in shadow puppetry. Those crazy pirates. 

Anyway, so the pirate and mermaid got married and had a kid and lived happily ever after on land or sea, which ever they chose. Art imitating life. Oh wow, wouldn't it have been great if they showed the mermaid giving birth through puppetry?! 

Even without the masterpiece that was The Little Pirate Mermaid, the museum would still have been all sorts of rad. They have a Jim Henson Exhibition on at the moment. Jim Mother-Funking Henson! There were Skesis' and Big Bird and the swedish chef and check this out:

Ernie is my homeboy

The permanent collection was fairly extensive as well and they have a workshop where they design/construct everything for their shows. I would love love love to work there but alas I am foreign. 

Oh and as promised, here's this:

I took a whole bunch of footage at this event and will hopefully get to do something exponentially more interesting with it once its all converted. I should have some great stuff of the kids in my cabin playing musics. I contributed with mediocre bongoing that was hopefully drowned out by actual real life musicians.

Went for a big long walk...

In bad shoes. You would think I'd have learnt. But I like variety, I was doing my feet an ascetical favour. 

Today I went to the happiest place on earth!!! The World of Cocoa Cola. Now I know what you're thinking. How delightfully tacky! And you'd be right. 

No one promotes like Coke. Maybe Apple but they learnt it all from Coke. I could have watched commercials for hours but there was a world of weird and wonderful sodas to taste.

Did you know that Tanzania has a drink called Stoney that tastes like carbonated Stone's Ginger Wine?

Asian has several beverages that taste like all sorts of Push-Pops.

And somewhere here in North America there is a flavour of Fanta that is just like drinking Vick's Vapor Rub.

I came out feeling a little woozy on sugar. Then they give you a free Coke!

Drank beer with German boys last night and found them to be a little rude. They were pissing off the locals so I found myself going into damage control. Actually most of the fellow travellers I've met along the way I have not been a fan of. 

I met a Kiwi (is that offensive?) girl a few nights ago, and yes, she gave me beer, but I found her to be really bitter. I'll admit that America has done some dumb shit and there is a bunch of dumb laws here, but the Americans that I've been fortunate enough to meet have been lovely and definitely not as dumb as you would expect. 

People here, know they're living amongst stupidity. They're not that ignorant and foreigners just look like assholes for acting like they are. Who's ignorant now, mien Herr? huh?

And so I've left Tennessee.

I'm now sitting in Hotlanta thinking I should have stayed longer. Oh well I bought my bus ticket and had to sit on it. I'm not even sure how to talk of TN. There was nothing and everything happening simultaneously. 

For the past week I resided at the Clam Shack. A Nashville institution or at very least it should be. I was surrounded by  crazy characters and friends of crazy characters and bandmates and nieghbours and Shack alummnai and all the stories of all the people that had come before me.

Nashville is a little difficult to get around in without a car or at least generous new friends who have cars. I had the latter.

Nashville has lots of music and musicians playing both country and music that you'd actually want to listen. I saw the latter.

I drank beer and rode bikes (without a helmet. Sorry Mum) and had crazy conversations about crazy theoretical theories (ask me about the universe being swiss cheese. Go on, I dare you).

And then, after all this relaxing randomness there came this:

This was meant to be rad video content but I'm having file conversion issues 

so this will have to do. 

More on that to come.

Hey Hey Kids

 Have been hiding out in Nashville for a few days. Unfortunately for y'all, there's been too many people to talk to so my brain has not formulated anything for me to write.  I will make up for this after the weekend as I've been invited to a medieval re-enactment event. 

My understanding of said event is that people make foam weapons then fight each other with them all day. At night everyone gets drunk. The event is in a national park just outside of Nashville. Shall be quite the experience me thinks.

Meanwhile, enjoy this:

Tennessee is not a bad place to be.

Thursday night I watched the sun go down over the fields of Virginia and woke Friday to watch it rise over the train tracks of Knoxville. I'm in Sunny Tennessee. And boy, is Knoxville pulling out all the stops to impress me. I've seen art, I've seen sun,I've seen tiny puppies make friends with other tiny puppies, I've seen Cheesecake on a stick AND I've seen Julia Nunes. You incorrigible little flirt Knoxville, wooing me this way. Julia Nunes is someone that was already on my US Mission list but I had know idea that she would be HERE and NOW and for FREE or that Knoxville was having their annual Dogwood arts festival. 

Julia Nunes: World's Most Infectious Smile.

Before we continue with Tennessee though, I feel I should back up and wrap up DC.

So i went to Big Dog Obama's House. On the way there I saw an awesome white building and taking photos of it I thought to myself "They must make a lot of the buildings white around here, like its the fashionable thing to do". No Sascha, that isn't a white house, it's THE White House. No sighting of BD Obama or his new dog Bo. There was a protest starting in the park across the street though. Something to do with Tax according to Mr security guard. He didn't seem to know or care much about it. Dude seen it all before. There wasn't much protesting happening when I went and had a look see, just rotations of the Forrest Gump soundtrack playing while people milled about (seriously guys get some new protest songs already). I then realised I was wearing my newly acquired Bloomsburg Hoodie and figured they might not appreciate being represented at a protest so I left to do a lap of Barrack's place.

By the time my circuit brings me back, the protest has grown. It seems every redneck with an agenda has come out to play. I still don't hear anything about taxes but I see this: 

And hear a lot of pledging of allegiance and star spangled bannering. I start to get a little scared and figure its time to run away just as this arrives:

I scampered away to the safety of the nearest art gallery.

This whole day was wet and miserable and couple that with the endless amount of Neo-Greek Monuments I got a little over it. It's no wonder the Vietnam War Memorial was so controversial. It's the polar opposite to all the white stone pillars. Speaking of the Vietnam War Memorial, The chick that designed it, Maya Lin, had an exhibition on at the Corcoran Gallery while I was there. She's no 90 year old french woman but definitely does some nice work. 

The following day the sun came out so I went in search of Japanese Cherry blossoms. Alas they had flowered the week before.

Tomorrow I move on to Nashville and after that I've been convinced to go to Memphis as well. We shall see. Unfortunately all this slothing about in the sun has given me the sniffles so I'll see where the mood takes me.

This Just In.

Looks like Dollywood isn't going to happen. 

Can you hear my disappointment through your eyes? Something to do with no buses running on weekends until May. I vow to get to you one day Dollywood. You have my word. But for now let me express my undying devotion to you with this dedication.

Up to no good.

 I almost forgot to share this. Guess who I saw in Times Square on Sunday

Those cheeky little trouble makers, The Chaser Boys, were dressed in fat suits and carrying around a giant plush Hamburger. No one but me seemed to pay them much attention. Maybe that's why they didn't look too happy.

The best things in life are free.

...and by that I mean the Smithsonian Museums. They may be in desperate need of funding but they're keeping it free if it kills them. Hopefully with the current economic climate they will have a chance to catch up. Is that how these things work? Money confuses me.

My day started by being befriend by the most pretenious man I ever hope to meet. He's doing a PHD in Shakespeare and is from Toronto. If the rest of Toronto's population is like him, I'm crossing it off my list. He decided to sit with me at breakfast and tell me that I had an attractive neck. Apparently it's unusually long. I think the toss-pot wanted an invitation to go sight seeing with me.  Also today I was given a flower by a homeless man. He wanted to tell me it was a pansy. It was beautiful  and fresh picked and I would have prefered to have had breakfast with him.

Later in the day I feel in love with a 90 year old french woman. Her name is Louise Bourgeois. I saw her exhibition at the Hirshhorn gallery and her sculptures were A-Mazing. 

DC is very pretty. It was built to be photogenic. The only problem I see with it is all the Americans. I don't mean the native DCians, I mean all the others. Americans don't travel much except, it seems, to their nations capital to soak up the patriotism and democracy. They didn't get in the way too much. I saw this: 

And for those of you that forget why this is important to America, let me remind you.

Funny thing is, I'd already formulated that comment when I heard a women say to her child "Forest Gump". Sometimes I wish I wasn't always right.

And that's why you don't make plans...

So this morning I woke up in New Jersey. Don't worry it wasn't at a bus station/park bench/ jail cell. Just the result of a very random Friday night.

Last night I decided to go out on the town. It had been two whole weeks since my last G+T, something had to be done. Luckily, NYC makes a strong G&T. 

Now going out on my own is not something I'm accustomed to or even that comfortable with but when in Rome; or rather when in a-whole-other-country-with-no-friends-or-pseudo-dates. Regardless, after a drink or two I was plenty happy dancing to the beat of my own (actually the DJ's own) drum. Low and behold that's when I made myself a couple of friends.

So I meet these girls from New Jersey. For those of you without your maps handy, New Jersey is across river from Manhattan. It is home to Kevin Smith, all his films and possibly Billy Joel. Also these girls:

Luckily, the girls I met were nothing like the Hot Mess illustrated here.  They were lovely and having a wonderful night all of their own making. So upon blowing their minds by telling them of my awesome directionlessness and no planage they were like "Come to Jersey! we'll show you the beach". What reason do I have to say no?  Really? It's not like I have to be anywhere. Ever.

So someone's Dad came to pick us up at 2:30 in the morning (what a champ. I think he even offered to cook for us when we got back to Jersey) at which point I had to pretend I was an exchange student at Bloomsbury Collage. It's in Pennsylvania. I'm Studying Special Education there. Then it was bye bye NYC, hello right-wing suburbia!

I woke this morning after the bestest, comfiest sleep I've had since leaving Oz. So much so I was surprised when I opened my eyes and found myself in a large family home surrounded by Easter decorations. They sure are hospitable in Jersey.

The plan then was to wrap me in a Bloomsburg hoodie, pick up Katie's (hospitable Jersey girl and fellow Bloomsburg Alum.) car, parked at Mr Champion Dad's house, and head out to the beach. In order for that plan to be successful, I had to...... drive.   

Sorry Mum. Won't do it again. Probably. 

That crazy kid. Good thing her parents were out of town as she would have had a time explaining a) why she invited a strange foreign girl to stay over and b) why on earth she made a strange foreign girl with an appalling driving record and from a country that drives on the opposite side of the road, drive her brother's car. I hope you're all very proud of me though. I pulled it off without a hitch. The drive was only about [the longest] five minutes [of my life].

So off to the beach we went. I didn't have to/wasn't allowed to drive to the beach. Katie handled that fine on her own. We went to a place called Asbury Park. It was lovely. Cold, rainy, windy, deserted but definitely lovely. I think I'd like to revisit  in the summer.

Having seen all the sights of New Jersey, it was time to bundle me on a bus headed back to the city. But, not before I got a present and just days after I realised I would probably need another jumper. 

Katie insisted that I keep it and show it the country. So hospitable, those Jersey girls.

WTF NYC

 Today's WTF (actually it was a  week ago but I had video file type issues) is brought to you by E 56th Street.

Now I now the vent things in the road do that steaming thing here. I don't know why. I heard - I've asked a lot of people for an explanation - that the subway used to be a river so they need to get rid of all the left of moisture all the time so NYC doesn't sink. In the same conversation I was told that the National Parks and Wildlife play recordings of bird noises to keep homeless people from sleeping in parks. So I'm dubious to say the least. Regardless I get the steaming thing is just part of the landscape but these crazy cone things just don't look safe. They have a mind of their own. They will possibly, one day, rise up and take over the city by way of a bloody and brutal steaming spree... Next film idea, anyone.

Side note: this was the first day I used my new camera. Add to that i was jet-lagged and hungry so not really thinking smart. Subsequently, to watch this video, tilt your head to the right. 

Stuffed and Mounted

My number one feeling today is felt. 

Actually that was yesterday. My number one feeling today is Holy Goddess it was snowing in SoHo. They've told me its supposed to be Spring. I'm beginning to think, however, that the blossoms in Central Park were put there by the National Parks and Wildlife to make us believe its spring. Mother nature, that wily c-bomb, ain't fooled though.

Back to felt, oh mysterious and wonderous stuff that it is.

I went to the Cooper-Hewitt museum of design and the only floor that wasn't closed for installation was the felt floor. It was A-mazing!! They had chairs made from felt!! I was so moved by the awesome powers of felt I bought this:

It's an egg cosy. Of course I don't actually have any eggs to make cosy and so, have no idea what to do with it. But look at it. Just look. Did I mention it's made from felt.

I then continued on my merry museum way to the natural history museum. what is wrong with the American education system when the poor kiddies don't even know what taxidermy is. Yes children, these are real birds. They were once alive. They are now stuffed. Not fake, stuffed. Speaking of taxidermy (and if I haven't told you already, let me just say it is one of my favourite crafts. Second now, only to felt.) check out this very fine example from the halls of mammals:

It has drool (sorry its actually a little dark). How do you even taxiderm that? Genius.

And I said praise the Lord...

The sun was shinning bright on downtown Harlem this morning. Perfect weather to get my Jesus on. That's right kiddies, I went to church. Luckily, heathen that I am, I did not burst into flames upon crossing the threshold. 

Apparently today is the first day of super special Jesus week. They gave me Palm leaves. Anyone know what I'm meant to do with them? Anyone? Hannah?

It felt a little disrespectful to take photos inside a church so i can't share with you the fabulous piece of juxtaposition that greeted me in the entrance hall. You will have to use your imaginations. Picture this my darlings, the exiting crowd of a joyous and packed Harlem church surrounding a framed picture of the white wrinkly creep-ster face of the pope. 

It was such a beautiful day that I wanted to go visit that giant green bitch but by the time i meandered to the ferry the last one for the day was leaving. I did finally brave a hot dog though.  

I'm not going to talk about the World Trade Center (sorry, soon-to-be Freedom Tower) as it made me angry. Maybe I just needed that hot dog. I do get testy when I'm hungry.

Today I heard a man asked to coat-check a steak sandwich.

To the poor girl's credit, it was odd of the old man to ask her to mind it while he looked at modern art. She panicked. Art school didn't prepare her to deal with sandwich queries.

Last night I went to the top of the Empire State Building and let me tell you nothing says romance like a full security check. Why the scene where Meg Ryan has to remove her belt and have her handbag scanned didn't make the final cut I'll never know. 

It was a little foggy yesterday so we only had "FIVE MILES VISIBILITY" as the uniformed attendants continually informed us. Like I know how far a mile is.

I just got in before the rain started up again. although the rain did look kind of pretty falling over the lights of New York.

Today, as well as eavesdropping on sandwich related conversations, I rode the subway. Like a ride. Largely this was due to getting on trains going in the opposite direction to the way I actually wanted them to. My newly shod feet were pleased though. 

(Check out my new kicks!)

They're feeling a little abused after my super hike to the East Village on thursday. It sure is a nice village though.

Then I ate a burger and finally remembered not to order coffee. It's always shit.

Day one. No sun.

 Three things I have learnt since my arrival in NYC. 

1: As hard as I try, my body will not veer to the right. Sorry to the pedestrians of the US. I will run into you.

2: A city is a city is a city.

3: Squirrels are the cutest fucking animals ever. Yeah we got joeys and possums and I'm quite partial to the platypus but Squirrels are ridiculously adorable. I may try to smuggle some into my pack.

Have yet to do the truly touristy stuff as it is cold and miserable and raining. I'm not whinging, just being practical about how much will be visible from the Empire State Building's observation deck and how disgustingly cold the Staten Island ferry will be.

I did go to the State Library and have subsequently fallen in love with the architecture of this city. Mmmm Art Deco-y goodness.

 

Tonight there is to be a hostel sanctioned pub crawl. By that I mean, a massive black man named Berkley is taking us all for cheap drinkies. How can I say no.