I Want To Break Your Fall

Bunch of stuff:

On Thursday night, me, Michael, VJ, Leslie, Pali, and Bri went to dinner on the river, which was where Bri was supposed to buy me my lobster wrapped in steak (or steak stuffed into lobster) for me pitching National Treasure the TV show in class. However, I told her that I had worked it out with our professor beforehand, out of the goodness of my heart, so she didn't have to pay for me (for the record, I wound up not getting a steak stuffed in lobster. Apparently that's hard to come by). At one point she pretended to eat candlewax, and I pulled out my wallet and laid out 60 american dollars, and I figured she'd say "you'll pay me 60 if I eat that?" and I'd say no, but instead she just ate it, so I had to pay her, but to get it back she had me drink a glass of olive oil. All the waiters watched, which I didn't realize until after when I asked a waiter who hadn't been serving us and I hadn't seen before where the bathroom was, and he asked me if the olive oil made me nauseas and that's why I had to go to the bathroom.

On Friday, our class was pushed back until 130, where we wrote a drama about a robot coming out of the closet to her family, which I actually like a lot. Then the actors performed our comedy script for us, which was cool, and then we all took a train to Pisa, saw the leaning tower, ate food, and then realized we had about two more hours until the next bus, so we hung out outside until it came. The next morning we woke up and went to Siena, which was aweeeesome. At one point we went to a wine museum, and they were giving free samples, and one wine was delicious; literally, the best thing I've ever drank, alcoholic or not, and I asked how much it was, thinking I'd buy a bottle. It was 25,000 euro. Not 2,500. Not 250. 25,000 Euro. I want more so badly.

Another thing I did in class the other day was write a love song about the valley of death, which I'm hoping one of the actors will compose and perform for me. It goes like this:

"I Want To Break Your Fall"

When the moon is enshrouded in the mist of my dreams

I bathe in your light to scrub myself clean

And when you climb the hills of my hopes to summits unseen

I follow you

But when you fall

Which you will

Well, then, I'll thrash and I'll scream and I'll kill

Yes, I will

Whoa-oh-oh

Well I wanna break your fall

As we're truckin' on down through the Valley of Death

I'll push all the Devil's vines aside

And kiss you in the sand lappin' up against the tide

Whoa-oh-oh

Yeah-ah-ah

Whoa-oh-oh

Yeah-ah-ah

Yes I will

And don't you know I lost you in the tornado of my fears

And I cried enough to flood the trail of tears

And I shut my eyes tight as I struggled through the years

But I lost ya, babe

Boop boop dee boop

Yeah, don't ya know I lost ya, babe

Whoa-oh-oh

Well I wanna break your fall

As we're truckin' on down through the Valley of Death

I'll push all the Devil's vines aside

And kiss you in the sand lappin' up against the tide

Whoa-oh-oh

Yeah-ah-ah

Whoa-oh-oh

Yeah-ah-ah

Yes I will

And as my throat fills with puke and my ears fill with wax

And my ass fills with shit, well I try to relax

But I imagine your face as you tumble and fall

So I can't get to sleep, nope, not even at all

'Cause you plummeted away from me, babe

Sha-la-la

Yeah, you plummeted away from me, babe

Whoa-oh-oh

Well I wanna break your fall

As we're truckin' on down through the Valley of Death

I'll push all the Devil's vines aside

And kiss you in the sand lappin' up against the tide

Whoa-oh-oh

Yeah-ah-ah

Whoa-oh-oh

Yeah-ah-ah

Yes I will

(Fade out on endless repeats of chorus)

Unlimited Feceeeeeees!!!!!

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Tuesday June 2nd

So, in the middle of the night, I totally electrocuted myself when my cell phone charger ripped out of the wall and I rolled over into it, and that kind of sucked. And by kind of, I mean it really fucking sucked, and I yelled "OW, FUCK!" really loudly and woke up my roommates.

Then, yesterday morning I pitched  my Sibling Rivalry outline to my class, which is my show idea about a recent high school graduate sharing an apartment with his brother who secretly is attending Spy School, only to find out his brother is attending the rival School of Evil Science. It went pretty well, though it looks like I'll need to turn it into an hour long show instead of a half hour, since I couldn't fit in everything I needed to in that small space (that's what she said).

Afterwards, the actors performed the horror script we wrote as a class, and then we finished writing a comedy script for them. After that, I went into town with Leslie, Pali, and Tony (all from my class). We got lunch, where apparently two sandwiches is cheaper than one coke, then gelato (I got a mix of Kiwi and Fruit Salad, which was maybe the best decision I've ever made in my life). We walked towards the river and down the side of it, just to get more of an idea of the city on foot, and came back at 7 for dinner. After dinner, a bunch of people, including myself, hung out in the lobby, which is what we usually do, and watched The Soup and then the first-ever two episodes of Lost, because a lot of people hadn't seen it. All the people who hadn't seen it kept saying "this show is stupid" while it was on, and as soon as it ended, they were trying to figure out who would buy the next episode to watch immediately.

Here are a bunch of pictures, just copy/paste:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2022181&id=1358280175&l=fabc132b20

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2022180&id=1358280175&l=6f286c273a

Country Prize 2: Journal of Confidential Information

Yesterday I spent the day inside, and read the script for Independence Day, and the script for Raiders of the Lost Ark. What surprised me the most, I think, is that the script for Independence Day blows my nuts, almost to Terminator Salvation levels (although at least the script for Independence Day isn't offensively bad). However, it's plain and not very well written-- My excuse for that, though, is that they probably sold the idea to Fox, since that's what Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich usually do, and then their script wasn't as important since they knew visually what they were going to do and just had to establish the order and the dialogue. It reads more like an outline than a script, anyway. And I don't really care: The movie is fucking bitchin', and that's all that matters.

Raiders, on the other hand, is incredible. Every little detail, every single punch and gun shot, is written out implicitly, and it's extremely well written. It's cool, too, because it's an early draft, and there's a lot of stuff in it that isn't in the movie (like a sequence in Shang Hai that was never even filmed but is both awesome and hilarious, if not slightly unnecessary). Both of these scripts are available on imsdb.com, if anyone cares to check them out.

Today we had class at 10, though I went a bit early to ask my teacher if it would be cool to pitch a National Treasure TV show in class, since one of the girls offered to buy anyone dinner if they'd do it. He said it was cool and he'd play along, so after we finished writing a comedy in class, I pitched "Country Prize," where Genjamin Bates is searching for a fabled prize which the Establishing Parents of our Country left transparent clues to on the back of the Bill of Rights (at "Genjamin Bates," Michael actually spit water he was sipping from out of his mouth, which is one of the funniest things I've ever seen). My idea for the second season was Country Prize 2: Journal of Confidential Information, which would follow more Genjamin Bates adventures.

I spent the rest of the day writing an outline for Sibling Rivalry, my 30 minute sitcom idea, which I finished. It still needs work, but I'll present it in class tomorrow, I guess.

More Details About Yesterday

Last night I was tired as all balls, so I'm going to try to write out some more details on my day yesterday, since I really just gave a quick summary.

We walked from campus to the Piazza San Marco (or something of that nature), which is about halfway between us and the Duomo, right on the outskirts of the actual city center. Then we turned right, walked through some outdoor market surrounding some church (you can see pictures if you follow the links in the below post), and then made our way to the river. You can climb down the wall on the side of the river if you want to sunbathe on the dam that cuts across it, so we climbed down and took a bunch of pictures (if you proportionally measured our time in each location, we probably spent the most amount of time posing for photos with a penis which someone graffiti'd on the side wall of the river-- you can also see pictures of that, too).

We got gelato at some point, and walked across Ponte Vecchio (I have no idea if that's how it's spelled, or if that's even exactly what it's called), then went to the Ufizi to take pictures with the statues (the Perseus killing Medusa is by far my favorite-- I also asked one of the dosants in Italian what it was, which made me feel awesome that I at least tried to use a little Italian). There's one statue of some dude beating the shit out of a Centaur (half-man, half-horse), and in one of my more inappropriate moments, I cured up the Centaur scene in Step Brothers, where Dale is a Centaur and he makes out with Alice, a Wood Nymph, and held it up next to the statue to see the comparison (whoever sculpted it was clearly inspired by Adam McKay's film). Then we walked around the Duomo, and back to Villa Natalia (where we live) to eat free dinner. Afterwards, most of the acting kids watched Twilight, and a bunch of us went back out, walking exactly where we walked during the day, to get gelato again by the Duomo. There, me and Tony, who have been faux-lightsaber battling with the lightsaber applications on our iPhones all around Florence, decided that we're going to buy toy lightsabers somewhere (I'm sure, somewhere in Italy, they're available), buy a boombox, cue of Duel of the Fates (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaiEHNv2g6w), and lightsaber battle up the steps leading to the top of the Duomo. So, if suddenly there ceases to be any more posts on this blog, it's likely because I'm in Italian prison for desecrating a church with a lightsaber battle (which will be worth it-- how many people can say "I went to Italian prison for desecrating a church with a lightsaber battle?"). We've already probably made a bad name for Americans by doing this with our phones on the sidewalks and bridges, all the while screaming "UNLIMITED POWERRRRR" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiCznGaex2c&feature=related), and "I'LL NEVER RULE THE UNIVERSE WITH YOU!!"

Also, I bought one of those zipper things where you lurch a round light-up frisbee upwards off of it, and it flies off into the air. It's really really really really cool, and I don't care if it makes me five years old to say so (that seems to be the big thing that guys sell on the streets at night, so you see literally dozens of them flying around in the air in the Piazzas). We rode the Merry-Go-Round, which was much more fun than you'd think, and just walked around a bit more (pictures of this should come soon, I didn't have my camera so I'm waiting for others to post them). We also passed a group of many 20 Americans, our age, drinking blatantly in the Piazza in front of the Uffizi (which is technically legal, but it was clear they were just having a party outside, and they were really loud and obnoxious, and I'm half surprised they weren't arrested, and half upset I wasn't with them).

That's about it from yesterday. Tex and I spent most of the day quoting Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and today it's raining, so I'm staying in to read scripts on imsdb.com (Independence Day first), since we have to read a feature script for class tomorrow.

Saturday

Today I woke up at 8:30. Why did I wake up at 8:30? A great fucking question. So, I went back to sleep, and woke up sometime after 10, I guess. Actually, more like 11, I think. Me, Michael, and Tex walked to the nearby deli thing to get sandwiches, which were fucking delicious (we all ordered separate things from the menu on the wall, and the old guy Georgio who works very, very, very slowly didn't listen and pretty much gave us all the same thing anyway. Not that I cared, because they were fucking delicious). Then we bummed around until 2, and then walked until about 7, from our dorms through the city to the river, up and down the river, to the Duomo and the Ufizi (or however it's pronounced) and then back. There's a statue outside the Ufizi of Perseus holding the head of Medusa, and it's pretty fucking awesome (read: very fucking awesome). Just as an aside. Then we came back, had free dinner, and walked back to the exact places we were earlier with the girls form class, for no real reason, but just because it was nice out. We got gelato, I bought for 3 euros a light up frisbee thing that flies in the air and is very very cool, and we rode a merry go round. Just got back now, at 2 AM. Some pictures are posted below (also with the two drawings I mentioned in a previous blog).

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021967&id=1358280175&l=b1cbb69ec7

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021964&id=1358280175&l=f5855fc1f1

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021963&id=1358280175&l=5f02e7b903

Drawings:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30697897&l=6b3ddef618&id=1358280175

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30697898&l=53380c4836&id=1358280175

Fridaaaaaay

We all slept in past breakfast on Friday morning, since there's very little time between breakfast and lunch anyway, and went straight to class, where we finished the horror script we were writing for the actors. We got several scripts that the networks picked up for next season, including Joel McHale's "Community" for NBC (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNrPr-UCtog) which was pretty awesome, and "V" for ABC, which I read the feature version of at The Weinstein Company and ripped apart because it was the worst script of all time, and the pilot for the show was exactly as awful. 

After class, I didn't do much of anything, in preparation for going out at night. Me, Andy, Leslie, and VJ (all writing students) played with the Vortex, but there were too many bugs, so we just came inside and hung out until dinner at 7. Then we waited about two and a half hours for Pali and Bri (also in writing) to get ready to go out, while all the acting kids left to go somewhere else, and wound up going to a bar somewhere across the Arno, which was pretty nice. After that, me, Michael, VJ and Ash (the only acting student out with us), went back to the dorms to sleep, and everyone else went out to some club. It was more or less uneventful, but pretty fun.

Thursday/Night

Yesterday, I woke up way too early again to eat breakfast, and then sat around and waited for class to start. We got there about ten minutes early, and our professor Jim was in the classroom playing guitar by himself, and we didn't want to bother him, so we waited the ten minutes and then went in. We spent the class period writing a horror scene as a group, the one about the two roommates who think their third roommate is a serial killer, and then finished around noon. After lunch, I watched a ridiculously awesome episode of Greek, then napped until about five. Me and Andy, a guy in my class, went outside to play with the Vortex (I know it might be weird to imagine me playing with any sort of sports device, even if it is made by Nerf, but the Vortex whistles when you throw it, and that's fucking awesome). Afterwards, my whole writing class went out to dinner (the acting kids had to stay in and rehearse). Bri, in our class, had heard about some good restaurant for American tourists, and it was actually really great. There's a bus strike going on, so we split two taxis, and there was a half hour wait where they kept bringing us unlimited wine and cheese. 

Once we were seated, they opened a bottle of wine without asking, and when I say bottle, I mean gigantic fucking jug of wine. Then they brought us antipasta (or whoever you would spell that) without asking, and we realized it's the kind of place where they're just going to keep feeding us without asking us what we want. So, we had that, a bunch of weird meat things that I can't explain but were really good, then a shit ton of pasta, then they wanted to bring us steak but we were too full, so they brought us desert instead, along with two other types of wine. We expected the bill to come out to at least fifty euros a person, but apparently the way it works is they just tally it up after we finish, so the manager comes over, looks the table up and down, shrugs, and says "twenty euros each." We're not sure if he overcharged us or undercharged us, but the food was really good and we ate an incredible amount of it, so that actually worked out really well. Then we came back, and I promptly passed the fuck out.

"Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, But I'm Going To Kick You Repeatedly In The Balls!!"

Not much went on after my long-ass nap yesterday. We hung out after dinner in the lobby area with all the couches, which seems to be where we'll be spending the majority of our time, and I drew a few cartoons ("Werewolf President 2: Fang a More Perfect Union," and a girl in my class drew a cute little googley-eyed creature and asked if I could incorporate it into something, so I drew it standing on a mountain of flaming skulls with the Yeets caption "What foul beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"). I miss my markers quite a bit, it's annoying that I have to wait two months to color these in (though the second drawing should probably be done in crayon, it's that kind of thing). I'll post pictures, along with photos of the estate, when I get a chance.

Today, we didn't have class until 3, because the Italians have a bizarre system where, if you took a connecting flight to get here, you have to declare yourself with the Italian police. I flew into Rome, so I was fine, but NYU bussed everyone who flew through connections to the police station in the morning (and, oddly, didn't provide transportation back, for no apparent reason, so everyone had to walk an hour-plus. I'm glad I wasn't there). Me, Mike, Tex, and two girls from the program walked into town to the nearest, small museum, I think it was called the Museo de San Marco. It was essentially two paintings: One of the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus with a lot of women swooning around her, and one of Jesus on the cross, bleeding from his side. These two drawings were simply reproduced, over, and over, and over on different types of material (wood, walls, fabric, etc). So, you know, that was cool, I guess. Walking back sucked, because it's hot as balls, and I'm at the point (as is everyone) where I'm showering two-to-three times a day and will probably have to do my laundry by this weekend before I run out of clothing.

Class was more or less noneventful, we pitched our ideas and talked about stuff. I am dumb, and my water bottle exploded all over all of the items in my bag (I'm not sure how this makes me dumb, because it was out of my control, but it was still dumb), including my computer, which is luckily fine. But during class, I had to leave all of my shit on the windowsill to dry off. Afterwards, we watched Grosse Point Blank, which I'd never seen, and liked quite a bit, and then went to dinner. After dinner, we all went to the field at the bottom of the Valley of Death (/Trail of Tears/Ho Chi Mihn Trail), because it was nice out and not hot as balls anymore, and played with my fucking awesome Vortex football (google it-- it totally whistles when you throw it). There really isn't anything funnier than 30 writers and actors trying to play with a Vortex football-- Oh, wait, there is. It's 30 writers and actors playing capture the flag. Which we totally did, until it got too dark, and then we came inside and watched Step Brothers, which is really the only way I ever want to spend my time.

Gaybot

Woke up at 7:30 AM today, again, so that by the time me and all of my roommates were done showering and stuff we could go down and get breakfast, which runs from 8:30-9:30. This turned out to be a mild terrible mistake, since we finished eating at 9, and class didn't start until 10, but food runs out quickly so the options are either:

A) Don't eat

or

B) Wake up way too fucking early, eat, then wait around for an hour.

Sadly enough, I'm probably going to keep up with Option B.

Class actually happened today, on time. Our professor is really cool-- His name is Jim Kouf, he wrote a bunch of movies under more than one pseudonym, including Rush Hour and National Treasure. A funny anecdote he told us about the writing of National Treasure was that an executive at Disney came to him and said, essentially: "Treasure map on the back of the Declaration of Independence. Go!" and the movie evolved from there. 

The class originally was meant to be structured like a TV writer's room, where each person is "Show Runner" of a series, and also a joint writer on a series, but he said the structure is a bit looser this year, where we concentrate on anything we want. So, my options, as they seem right now, are to work in the class polishing my feature (a sort of raunchy sex comedy that takes place at a Bar Mitzvah), or develop some TV show ideas I have (a guy find out he has an evil twin; chaos ensues / a high-powered executive is fired from his job at an HBO-like network, and has to take a job producing very low-brow reality shows like "Bro-Choice," where adopted children can decide to abort or keep the new, brewing biological fetus in their adoptive mother's womb). I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet.

Another thing we're doing in the class is, as a team, writing several five-or-so page genre scripts for the acting students here to perform. One of the genres is horror, and it looks like me and Mike are going to team up and tackle that one, based on our roommate Tex. Mike made a joke the other day about how Tex is a serial killer, and since then, Tex has only acted like a serial; calling Michael just to say "I can see you," and caressing a corkscrew gently while whispering to himself "This is nice." We think we're going to plot out a horror short about two roommates, one convinced their third roommate is a serial killer, the other convinced he's not, and then, obviously, horror ensues when he is (this should also be funny). This'll be great, too, because Tex can act it out, since he's in the acting program. The other idea that I really like, but I don't know if I'll be able to write two of them, is a sci fi idea where a robot is trying to "come out of the closet" to his friend about his robot-ness (my teacher calls this idea Gaybot). That one should be fun, too.

After all of that, we got lunch, then took a long-ass nap. As you can imagine, the long-ass nap was wonderful.

Day #3 - Terminator Salvation Blows My Nutsack

Today my roommate Michael, who is a terrible, horrible, no-good, dirty piece of shit of a human being woke me up at 7:20, because I had mentioned the night before I planned to wake at 7, and he wanted to make sure I didn't oversleep (I had, unbeknownst to him, set my alarm a half hour later). We went down for breakfast, met the rest of the people from out class (there are 8 of us altogether), and then walked across the valley of death to get to class at 9 AM (from now on it starts at 10, but the first day was an hour early, for whatever reason).

A note about the valley of death: It's fucking terrible. It's about the length of a football field, but sloped so you walk 50 yards downhill, and then 50 yards uphill, in never-less-than-90 degree weather. The downhill's not bad, but the uphill is the worst thing I've ever had to do in my life. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh_Trail

That's a good example of what it's like, walking across the valley of death. And it's the only way to get to class, which is in a building directly on the opposite side of the valley from our housing, which includes the cafeteria and lounge and everything else we need.

So, we walk across the valley of death, get to our classroom, sit for ten minutes, and then some lady appears and says "LAWL! JAY KAY! ROFL ROFL ROFL ROFL!" ("Your professor hasn't even arrived in Florence yet, so you have the day off"). So, we walk back across the trail of tears to our building, go back to breakfast, and then hang out for a bit until we all walk into town to go grocery shopping (groceries include: Jack Daniels, Jagermeister, and two four-euro-each bottles of wine). Then we walk back to the building (it's at least 20 minutes to and from the closest signs of civilization, and the walk back at high noon blew my nutsack-- which we will get to, in relation to Terminator Salvation, later in this blog).

Orientation at 3 PM went something like this:

"Hi! Welcome to Florence! We're going to call you, one by one, up here to go over your passport paperwork."

Then they called us up one by one to go over our passport paperwork, and when we weren't the one going up to go over our passport paperwork, we sat there and did absolutely nothing for two hours. Eventually, they went over a powerpoint as we were still being called up one by one, and the powerpoint went something like this:

"If you're drunk, don't be too loud, because you might be fined lots of money. If you get on a bus, don't not get your ticket validated, because you might be fined lots of money. If you go to a club, don't leave your drink aside, because then you might be raped." 

This orientation was long and redundant and boring, which roughly can be equated to how it feels to sit through an anal pap smear, finally ended just before dinner. So I briefly sat in the lobby and worked on my next cartoon-- Werewolf President 2: Fang a More Perfect Union-- which was nice, because due to the hell that was Drawing and Design for Animation last semester, I didn't draw a single new cartoon, then went to dinner. Afterwards, we all hung out briefly in the lobby, and decided that The Tims should have separate knicknames. Not "Tim 1" and "Tim 2," because that connotates that one is better than the other, as does "Tim Alpha" and "Tim Beta." So, being that one is from Boston, and the other is from Texas, we are now referring to them as Boston and Texas (Boss and Tex). However, together, they are The Tims. Also during this conversation, we discussed the bullshit that is Terminator Salvation, a film which blows my nutsack. Now, reader, you might be saying to yourself, "Blows your nutsack? That sounds pleasurable!" Well, you're fucking wrong. It's terrible. Here are the issues with Terminator Salvation, because I know you care a lot:

1) It's fucking bullshit.

2) They don't address time travel. Why is this bullshit? Because the first three Terminator movies are ALL ABOUT FUCKING TIME TRAVEL. The one time it's mentioned is when John Connor QQs about how if Skynet kills Kyle Reese, his teenaged father, he will never exist (John Connor, in the first Terminator, sends his friend Kyle Reese back in time to save his mother from being murdered by Arnold. Kyle totally bones Sarah Connor, and winds up being John Connor's father, even though he's younger than John in the future world). In Salvation, Connor destroys the factory which is producing the T-800. Now, this makes no sense, because the T-800 is sent back in time to kill his mother, which is what prompts him to send Kyle Reese back in time in the first place, to save his mother. If they destroy the T-800's, then Kyle won't need to go back in time to bone Sarah, and then JOHN CONNOR WON'T EVER EXIST. Yet, in Salvation, they destroy the T-800 factory. See how this is bullshit? Yes, maybe, there are other T-800 factories in this movie world, though they're never addressed.

3) Arnold appears, and Connor barely reacts. This makes no sense, because Arnold was like a father to Connor. Seeing him for the first time in at least ten years, Connor might react, at least a little bit, before Arnold tries to kill him. It's a big deal, finally seeing the skin on the T-800. This movie sucks.

4) It's fucking bullshit, and it blows my nutsack.

After this, we went for a walk looking for a cafe. We went right out of the campus, and found nothing but a sign saying we were leaving Florence (and the road immediately devolves into a country road without a sidewalk). Then we doubled back, and halfway down the road we typically walk to get to Florence, we took a right at a roundabout that we usually take a left on, and it brought us to the middle of nowhere, and we walked for about an hour before we wound up back at the same restaurant we had lunch at, because we couldn't find anywhere else in the area.

Looks like we will be taking the bus from now on, and hopefully validating our tickets so we don't get fined lots of money, since there's nothing within walking distance.

Nathan Fillion Should Be The Green Lantern

Pretty much minutes after my first post, Michael and I started watching Step Brothers. We made it about ten minutes in ("Dad, we're men! We like to shit with the door open! We like to talk about pussy! We go on river boat gambling trips! We make our own beef jerkey! That's what we DO!") when I made the hardest decision of my life and pulled us away from it to at least go out and walk around the grounds. 

This turned out to be a terrible decision, not because the campus isn't beautiful, which it is, but in order to get to the class building, you have to walk down a very steep hill, and then walk back up it on the other side. This, coupled with really ridiculously painfully hot weather, kind of blows. At least, within minutes of that walk, I passed out for about three hours, and now I'm on some sort of a normal sleeping schedule (though it's 8 AM here, and I've been up for an hour. So not that normal of a sleeping schedule).

Afterwards, we went to dinner with our two roommates (Tim and Tim, I shit you not). We have another two beds in the room which are empty; they'll probably be occupied when the other programs start in a week or two. The room itself is just one open space, with bunk beds on one side, and two bunk beds on the other, and six desks back to back in the middle (3 and 3). The bathroom has two showers with a piece of barely non-transparent plastic between them, which should make for fun mornings.

At dinner we met everyone else who's here from the program right now, so far just the Writing Florence kids, acting kids, and a grad-student nutritionist program where they go around Italy and eat food (best class ever). Dinner was in the cafeteria, and it was surprisingly good, and then afterwards a bunch of us took the bus into town, got gelato, walked around the duomo, then waited forty five minutes for a bus back which never came, and wound up taking a taxi. Apparently the busses are always that unreliable.

On a much more important but completely unrelated note:

http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/05/nathan-fillio-2.html

This is the coolest thing in the world.

Day #1 - "This Is Why America Is The Best"

I woke up this morning around 10 AM to the house phone ringing-- It was my grandma, who then called my cell phone, left a voice mail on both phones, and then called the house again (naturally leaving another voicemail). She was calling to make sure I was awake, because you never know if the car being sent to take me to Newark might come early. The car, scheduled to come at 1 PM, did not, in fact, come early, and at 1 PM I headed through the city to New Jersey, the driver, a really nice guy, talking the whole time to me about his son, my age, at Hofstra, and how they went to a Yankee game the other day, because their first game was rained out, but the game they wound up going to was nice, and even though it's summer weather now, he still wore a sweater and was comfortable.... If you're still awake and reading this, you made it farther than I did in the car, because I blatantly fell asleep during this conversation (monologue?).

But, there was no traffic, and I made it to Newark early, and progressed pretty much without incident until security, where, after crossing through the metal detector, I was putting back on my shoes and collecting my things when the guy next to me starts chatting up the TSA officers, one woman and one guy, and it somehow got to the point where the woman officer was joking about beating up the guy officer, and asked how much we'd pay her to do it. I offered her $10, and the male officer reminded me that if he wanted to, he could hold me at the air port indefinitely and, at worst, give me a full body cavity search. So I apologized and went on my way to the gate, where I sat for about two hours before boarding.

Boarding, take off, the flight, and landing were completely uneventful. That might be because, courtesy of the pharmacy that is Dose, I knocked the fuck out. The other day, Dose sent me an email regarding the $100+ spent at the iTunes store last month between me, my brother, and my mom. Being a good son, last night I downloaded the $16 Frederic Chopin collection from iTunes, and listened to it on the plane (it's, like, 40 hours altogether), which, if the ambien didn't put me right to sleep, Chopin definitely did (in a good way, though. Totally worth the $16, Dose. I swear!).

After the flight, the line for customs was maybe the longest fucking line I've ever seen in the history of the world, with zero organization whatsover. It was literally three stations with door-sized entranceways for people to approach and show their passports at the end of a big empty room. No roped off lines, no officers directing people to any specific area. About four flights came in at the same time, and it was literally just a room packed with people shoving to get to the front (if you've ever imagined what Auschwitz was like when the Allies arrived with trucks of bread, I'd venture to say this was a pretty accurate depiction). 

This took about an hour in and of itself. The title of this post comes from the two women behind me on line; one was an extremely obnoxious bird-faced blonde woman, traveling with her silent husband, who was complaining very loudly that people who got in after them should move to the back of the line (despite the fact that there was no line, I understood her point, even if she was complaining rather annoyingly). The woman behind her was American, with her young daughter, living in Italy because her husband was Italian. Her daughter kept screaming "MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY!" over and over, and the mom blatantly ignored her while complaining to the bird-faced bitch about how "in America, this would never happen. In America, there would be ropes. There would be lines. That's why America is the best, hopefully, in the world, forever." The bird-faced ho' bag was eating that shit up, and because no one would stop people from pushing forward in the line, she decided that the best plan of action would be to do exactly what she was bitching about, and push her way to the front as obnoxiously as possible without any regard for human life or safety. 

All the while, that kid is yelling "MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY!" and everyone around us is getting really pissed off, myself included. She wasn't even making an attempt to silence her kid. Eventually, finally, the mom remembers she has a daughter who won't shut the fuck up, and approaches a cop, asking to cut the line, and he says "There are other children here, not just yours, that's unfair," to which the mom spends another half hour complaining that in America, she'd have been let right through, and that the Italian system of doing things is very upside down. These women are one of the few reasons I don't like being American.

After that horrific ordeal, I took the train to Rome's central train station, bought a 7Up, promptly choked on it at the front of a line full of people, turned red, and had to catch my breath before I could pay, and then took the train to Florence, and a taxi to campus. Then I went to bed for two hours, and now I'm writing this blog. All told, neither feels like a very good use of my time in Florence, and I'm going to stop now and go do something productive, like walk around or, you know, learn Italian (I watched Step Brothers on the flight here, and my roommate Michael wants to watch it tonight, because he's never seen it. So the odds of me doing anything productive today are slim). The campus itself is beautiful, though it's 10,000 degrees and probably only going to get hotter, so, you know, that blows. I don't know much else about the program yet, but we have orientation tomorrow, so I guess I'll figure it out.