Sunday, June 28, 2009

still sickly and grey outside. everyone here is perplexed and doing no-rain dances, and i'm right in there with them. my tan is Suffering with a capital S. on the bright (non-pun) side, rainy weather makes for lovely afternoons and evenings indoors, movies, snacks, snuggles, and the like. i'm trying to raise my productivity level by studying more, as these finals are INSANE, but i'm just so...so...sleepy.
oh but guess what this little lucky duck called me gets to do this fourth of july weekend? no, not take a pontoon boat out on lake allatoona and slam miller highlife. no, not drink vodka and diet coke out of a water bottle and run amuck through the marietta square with john frey, swearing, despite how spectacular the fireworks are, never ever to do fourth of july at the square again (is it just me or do the flocks of north-cobb red necks multiply every year?). no, not put on sparkly star-shaped glasses and set off bottle rockets in someones back yard. this year, i'm going on mini break! to VERONA (oh, romance!)! TO THE OPERA!!! FL surprised me the other day with tickets to Aida, at the arena di verona, a beautiful and very famous roman colloseum where some of the greatest operas in italy are held. he said he knows its not "hamburgers and budlight", but that there are usually fireworks afterward, so is this ok with me? i threw my little arms around his neck and yelped. but i have nothing to wear! this is strictly black tie, and im so ill prepared!
on top of that homeboy got us tickets to see bruce springsteen at the end of july (bravo!). can't wait!

Thursday, June 25, 2009

rain, rain, GO AWAY

ugh. its positively dreary here. stormy, cloudy, nasty, misty, cold, wet, damp...depressing. how many rainy-day adjectives can one girl list before she cracks? i've always loved weather like this the best, infact considered the pacific northwest as a primary place to reside for just this aspect. that was of course considering that i had any or all of the following:
-books
-a comfortable couch
-a kitchen
-movies
-record player
-my puppy
as it stands, i have none of these things. the pool and mountain hiking and vineyard-ing were my primary during-the-day activities aside from school work. everything is on halt now, and i am stuck inside this sad concrete building full of people that i pretty much no longer like (AT ALL) and i have NOTHING TO DO but study. which is good. but i mean...
the trees do look lovely and lush, however. and the air is fragrant. and at night, when i'm at FLs and feeling comfortable i love the brutal storms outside. but these past few days ive just sort of slept...and i've had the strangest dreams...

so theres really not much to blog, is the point. nothings going on. a long june. slovenia was great, as ive said, and supposedly if its sunny this weekend i'll go to croatia.
i eat alot of good food at night, and ive been running up the mountain every day. trying to bulk up my vocablary and finish off some of these insane finals.
mimi, may i have your street address please? theres a stamped postcard with your name on it sitting on my dresser.
love, e

Saturday, June 20, 2009

LAME. i lost 15 euro. i think its these slovenian boys; every time im around them weird, inconvenient things happen to me. they laugh and say, "youre always such a mess! losing things, having things stolen, etc"...except thats not necessarily true. generally im very good about keeping up with my stuff, but...well whatever. will ying-yang it and not buy coffees, cigarettes, any food other than bread and fruit, will wash hair at FLs to avoid shampoo expense and will hang clothes up to dry throughout my room instead of taking them to the big, wonderful, super hot dryer at the laundromat. the weird thing is that i made it home with everything else that was in my pockets (drivers license, compact, slip of paper with the hot iranians phone number)but the money is nowhere to be found. maybe i bought something and forgot? maybe i gave it to a poor, hungry orphan child. yes, that must be it. i remember now. i was doing good deeds last night.
whatever. will not think about it. am in good hands here in ljubljana. my darling friend Zlatko (goldian) is taking good care of me. he studies film and design at the university, and has recently landed a job wherein he gets to work as a journalist interviewing musicians, minor slovenian celebrities, and the like. showed me this video of himself last week when he got to go to the playboy party here in Ljb. said he didnt know any faces, and all the girls at the party were so generally unimpressive looking that he really couldnt decifer between the bunnies and the normal citizens. had to go around and ask, "excuse me, are you someone important?", and by the end of the night (i.e. lots of drinks later) the question turned to, "are you one of the people who takes their clothes off for this magazine? no? why not?" hilarious.
we went to some famous park last night, where there is a ring of different clubs, each offering different types of dance beats. my favorite was the balkan music. i made some friends, laughed alot. most everyone speaks english, as with a population of only 2 million, the citizens of this country have need to speak languages other than their own. slovenian is mildly charming, in its way, though makes my head hurt a bit after a while. and all the words look like badly written text messages, missing all the vowels. there is now a video of me, taken by zlatko, where i am trying to read a sign in slovenian. i absolutely butcher it. the best part is that alot of the people speak italian, too, so i could walk around hopping back and forth between languages. its fun!
well, no matter how terrible those days in barcelona may have been, the good that came from it are these wonderful new friends of mine. such cute boys. its a rainy day in Ljb, and zlatko and i are gonna go about the city making movies, short films, and taking photos with his various cameras and lenses. feeling very artsy fartsy.

how is everyone at home? i miss yall.
my eye is better. i kind of liked it all blue.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

HELP A GIRL GET HER WINGS...AEROSMITH CONTACTS NEEDED

so look yall, theres been a big mistake. after 4 years of waiting patiently for Aerosmith to come down from their towers of ivory and french ticklers, i have received some tragic news. while reading over the list of recently announced tour dates for 2009, i saw that the show for atlanta was scheduled on july 15th, the night of my 24th birthday. what luck! what chance! what beauty! you might say. but there's more to it than that. Fortuna, that cruel, wanton lady of pointed fickleness, has sideswiped me. while aerosmith in my home town for my 24th birthday may be the sweetness that my dreams are made of, it is not to be. i, eleanor, will not be in atlanta on the 15th of july. as it stands, it is an impossibility. i am on the other side of the pond; i may as well be on the other side of the moon. yes, the dark side. i feel like i have, as they say, been hit by a fuck.
after a brief bout of depression, denial, and outright rage, i came to a sudden calm. there is something to this, i just know it. i'm not one to doubt the stars and their alignment, and i'm not one to ignore obvious fuckwittage for what it may possibly be: a sign, a chance to move and shake, take note.
For years now, since the tender age of 12, my heart has belonged to those toxic boys from boston. my heart, in particular, has belonged to joe perry. for years now, and many a time, people have asked me: why?

there are thousands of answers i can give to that question. thousands.

like what happened to my heart the first time i saw the 1975 photo of joe perry after he had been bitten by Evil Ellisa, a bandage over his sweet chin, a pout on his face to sum up saddness, tenderness, drunken brawls. this picture broke my heart, and for the first time i wanted to take a lover, i wanted to nurture, hold, scratch, make love, and apply bandaids afterwards, if need be. i cut that picture out of the book (Walk This Way: an autobiography, which i have read 7 times) and have carried it on my person ever since.

another answer could be the way it felt when i was 16 to sit in a fiery red pontiac with my best friend and push play on the CD player, starting Sweet Emotion just as we hit that first curve...so that by the time second :35 came around and the vocals came through, full blast through the speakers, we'd be right there, at the dip in the road, 60 miles an hour and flying through the air. we had it timed out perfectly.

Maybe its because they could sum up love in words and experiences that werent available to us when we were young. The first true love letter i ever received was graced at the end with this quote:
"The buzz you be gettin' from the crack don't last; i'd rather be O.D.in' on the crack of her ass."
i mean, if thats not romance at 17, i dont know what is.

and this one time...steven tyler sweated on me. you know why? cause he was ROCKING OUT.

however, for those dim enough to lack the understanding and awareness of how FUCKING AWESOME aerosmith is, for those dim enough TO NEED TO EVEN ASK, i feel no need to respond with any more than: because i love them, ok?

so, what then.
after considering my options, after considering the universe as a whole and the way this world works and the way my life has been going and blowing on a couple of dandilions and considering the light and the heat, the solution to this seems obvious. simple. fantastic.
i need to talk to joe perry. tell him whats up, explain the situation, the rub, the problem, the obvious miscommunication between my life path and their tour dates, and see if we cant work something out. because, i mean, why not?
those boys have a rollercoaster. a Wii game. i just ate my lunch out of a vending machine. if i had millions of dollars, i'd get my ass to atlanta for that show, no sweat. done and done. unfortunately, i am not a millionaire. nor do i own my own plane, boat, or submarine. floo powder is not real, and anyway, chimneys big enough to stand in are hard to come by in italy. by all laws of physics, i cannot transport myself there by means of mental willingness, concentration, or desire. if i could, i would. the only option, therefore, is to ask my boys a favor. it will be my birthday, after all.

so this is what i plan to do, what i plan to ask joe perry for: a plane ticket home to see him play in atlanta on the night of my 24th birthday. when you really think about it, is that so much?

what i need from you, friends and family, is contacts. numbers, names, ideas...any way that you might know of for me to reach joe perry or anyone related to aerosmith. i have less than a month.

thank you for your help, and remember: the light at the end of the tunnel...may be you. good night.

eleanor g. parker
ugh, have a major headache. i reckon its from the pounding it received in my fall yesterday. my eye looks cool.
the weather here is gloomy and overcast today, makes me sleepy. i have an insane amount of work to do for my school. finally got all the info for my finals, and realised that it will take me the next 6 weeks to complete all of this. first things first is that project. told FL about the disasterous incident with simone and my writing skills. he said not to worry: with my mind (which he has deemed "infallable" and "bright"), my ideas, and his italian, we'd knock the project out together. good man. we're gonna work on it tonight. as of right now, i get to translate 45 pages of notes into english, and then translate 20 pages of responses back into italian. fun. whoo. hoo.
on a bright note, i think i might be going to ljubljana (spelling? the capital of slovenia) tomorrow. my friend goldian is having some sort of party and has requested my presence. will be nice to get out of cormons for a couple of days, and the train ride is very pretty.
thats about it for now...
oh, except i found out that aerosmith is going on tour again this summer (have been waiting for this for 4 years), and their atlanta date is set on my birthday. this news caused me to have a minor mental and spiritual collapse. am trying to find a deeper meaning to make this not just completely sad. something...anything...

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

very black day. spent 5 hours writing out a project for my communications class. lots of italian, lots of dictionary, lots of conjugating verbs in odd ways. brain fried a bit. then i took it to simone, who read the title page and said, "i have no idea what you're trying to say here". bad start. feel terrible and illiterate. am tired of not being about to speak this stupid language, im just over it.
also i fell down out of the train this morning and now i have a black eye.
none of this is working out.
feel like its time to call it quits.

i just want annabelle so badly it hurts.

Friday, June 12, 2009

adorable day!
swoooon picked me up from the train station this morning at 8am, as we had some work to do at the vineyard that we could not do yesterday due to thunderstorms. it has been raining cats and dogs here for the past week or two, totally sad, and i have lost any semblance of a tan and gone back to being "mozzarella". today, however, was stunning! 8am, as i waiting out in front of the train station i was sweating in the best way, sunglasses on, kind of awake and ready for some berry measurements. swoooon pulled up and didnt even say goodmorning, just popped open the passenger door and we rode in silence for the next 10 minutes, listening to morning talk radio news programs and glaring into the sun. pulled into a coffee shop and 15 minutes later we were both perky and ready for our day.
grape measurements went well, but lord is it boring work. swoooon cracked me up by saying, "you know, i'm a really nice person considering all the boring things i have to do. you'd expect me to be a complete asshole, actually". i started to laugh but yawned instead, my hand cramped from writing hundreds of tiny little numbers. anyway, all important work has brunt tasks; swooon says that being of latin descent he knows this better than anyone, and he's surprised i know how to keep up.
so we work for 2 hours maybe, and i'm about to die, but then we stumble into a little clearing a few rows over. about 7 men, ages ranging from 20-60, were lounging in the grass in the vineyard, having a picnic. they hollered to us, and swooon, in friulano, says "no, no, thanks" and then they start waving at me. swoooon turns to me and says, "want a glass of wine?" and from their hollars and insistance and the hot sun and the sudden appearance of cheese, i say, ok, fine. the men pour swooon and i a little glass, homemade by one of the guys, and they break me off a big chunk of fresh cheese, and we commence to laugh and talk under the hot 10am sun, all in friulano and broken italian and some cute english and it was just out of a book or something. the boys loved me, and asked me questions, which i did very well with, responded and all, and when they got too-too-friulano for me swooon would laugh and translate. after a bit the wine was gone and the cheese was gone and it was time to get back to work. we bid our adieus and i was grabbed and given an onslaught of kisses on both my cheeks by what formed into a line of sweaty, sunstarched friulian men, all vying for one more peck. i was all giggles and swooon was laughing histerically and trying to save me. when we escaped i said, "you know that little one...i'd let him take me to dinner if he wanted". so it's a date; swooons gonna set the whle thing up. too adorable, and so very italian. lots of berry work and hot sun more and i was ready to head back to cormons.
the grand opening extravaganza of the porchis pool is tonight and everyone is up in arms in excitement. if i havent explained, the wonderful, crazy, wine-drenched people here in cormons frequent a place called Porchis. it's a fantastic little haunt that serves .60 glasses of local wine, fresh ham of all varieties, and all the small town gossip and crazyness that you could ask for. the owners for some reason or another- i cant really comprehend why except for well, why not- have built a swimming pool right smack in the middle of the vineyard behing the bar. cabanas have been built, umbrellas laid out, a beach volleyball court installed. it's gonna be a madhouse. so tonight is the opening party, complete with roasted pig, polenta, and a variety of local foods. i told FL i'd meet him and his friends there around 8ish, right after i take a nice nap...

Thursday, June 11, 2009

i've been bitten by a spider! twice!

warning: following post a little gross...

eeeeeeew. there are these nasty misquitos here called Tiger Misquitos (a misnomer, as tigers are special, beautiful beings, and these misquitos are nasty and not at all orange) and they leave gigantic, gooey, itchy welts all over poor little me. basically like flying poison ivy as far as my body is concerned. so last night im about to have a fit because i'm all itchy and have red bumps and then i see the really big one on my leg start to OOZE. right as i'm looking around for a surf-board sized nail file with which to SCRATCH, FL grabs my hand and tells me to stop. "look," he says, "thats not a misquito bite, not unless its a really scary misquito with fangs". i examine the messy bite area, and note that he is correct...this has come from something with fangs...two fangs capable of PIERCING. the OOZE is coming from both holes. theres another one on my back. almost fainted. luckily, italy has something similar to calamine lotion (except its green! yea!) so now i am painted up and pretty. john frey would love it. anyway. i have to watch out and make sure i dont come down with a fever or get really sleepy or anything. yuk.
have to go to the vineyard with swooooon, ill write later, i promise
e

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

ooh though! went to vienna yesterday! we were just gonna drive over the border to austria for the hell of it, but once we got there we just kept going. was lovely! drank some beers, rode the famous ferris wheel, had a schnitzel and a brutwurst. such fun!
oh my god. just got a haircut. is very short. is very...spiky. will have to go buy some dior lipstick because that is the only way i am going to pull this off without looking like Reba fucking McEntire. help.
i have no idea why or how this happened. entered with a lot of tangly, dirty hair. left looking like a pixie. kind of cute actually when i pin it up a bit..punk rock...maybe...

ok. am calm.