Joe's Blög

that was the subject of my favourite email of the day…(it was the only email of today…but that doesn’t make a difference to the point I’m not going to make)….

I also stumbled across this online…This (maybe) is only funny if you were one of the people excited to be “different” and instead of holding up the tower you wanted to do something more interesting (like put a WWI german helmet on top)….
without further adeiu…

what...it wouldn't fit in your arse???

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So  Saturday I took the Vespa to Pisa with every intention of seeing Gogol Bordello.
Due to my ignorance of Italian roads I apparently took the “long way round…”. My plan was to drive down along the coast until I hit Marina di Pisa, but by the time I hit Viareggio I was pretty sick of traffic and the clutch on the Vespa was being a bit wanky…
So I saw a sign for SS1 to Pisa and took it. It’s not the Austrada (it’s illegal to take a 125cc scooter onto the Austrada). Just a 2 lane highway. I eventually made it to Pisa and since I was paranoid about the clutch I decided to make sure everything was in working order as if I followed the plan I would be driving home at midnight or so…
So I find out I have no tailight. The brakelight works, but not the tailight…This is problem number 1…Problem number 2 was that I forgot my phone…This is a problem for a myriad of reasons. No internet, no calling colleagues for help. Brilliant!!! So now I’m thinking I either need to get home before dark or find a hostel and go to the show and then stay overnight in Pisa. So I walk around for a couple hours looking for a hostel (I had ruled out proper hotels due to cost). There was supposed to be a hostel close to the tower, but I did not find it. If I had had my phone I could have looked online…

So it’s getting dark and I decide to head home. I’m not really sure how to get back, but I got really lucky and stumbled onto the right road immediately. Made it home by dusk and had an exciting evening at home…Was a bit painful to drive that far on a Vespa. My arms and back were a bit sore by the time I got home. Will have to practice I guess. It was actually a fun trip tho. Gave me something to do I guess….

Took a  few pics on Saturday and found some old photos on my phone as well.

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I finally got a fan. The store close to me was all sold out by the time I got home yesterday so today I went to Carrefour (the wal-mart wannabe) at lunchtime.
It took a bit of magical engineering to get the fan home (due to it’s size and me being on the Vespa), but I did it. I figured I was being quite clever, but then I realized every Vespa and motorbike owner has probably had to go through the same scenario already…so then I figured I wasn’t so clever. I’m always coming up with genius ideas after several other people have. It’s like I was born at the wrong time…

Tomi and Berger are booked for a trip here in August. I was excited until I realized I have to do a proper cleaning

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I’m all booked for a weekend in the UK in October. I seem to have been pressured into renting and driving a car

I can barely cross the street correctly in england (good thing they paint “Look right” at major intersections) and now Tomi wants me to drive a car over there…heh…yeah. Full insurance me thinks! Can’t wait for the first time I come to an intersection and end up in the wrong lane going the wrong direction. I’m going to prepare a will before we go…
Actually thinking about driving there makes me kind of nervous. I’ll probably need a drink or two to calm my jittery self before hitting the road.
What could possibly go wrong

Check back in October for some hilarity….

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so last week when I was in Pisa I noticed that there is some music festival going on this weekend…The Skatalites are doing a show tomorrow night (early 60′s ska group), so I googled something about pisa concerts today and I see that Gogol Bordello are doing a show NEXT WEEK!!!!

This excites me to no end. I was trying to think of the last time I was this excited to see a band that I know and I figure it was either Frank Black or Modest Mouse in 2007…anyway I’m really psyched to go to their show next weekend (and I’ll probably make it down for the Skatalites tomorrow).

so I may have said this before but I only ever heard of Gogol Bordello after seeing “Everything is Illuminated”. It’s a great movie and it co-stars Eugene Hutz (who is the singer of the band). I may have to follow up by watching the movie again this weekend…coincidentally one of the three books I bought in Germany is another by Jonathan Saffron Foer, who is the author of Everything is illuminated….

anyways (x2) here’s a few clips of Gogol Bordello.
As usual mind the volume between clips…

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I came across some Two Gallants on You Tube. I realized I’ve never tortured my faithful readers with any of their music. I saw these guys with 2,0 and some REALLY hot bird in Frankfurt at the end of 2007 (stay calm…he loves his wifey).
They were incredible…so here you go. The volume between these two vids are a bit off, so mind your speakers.

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I emailed this glorious sentence to a colleague yesterday:

“Are you having any travel to Italy?”

ummmmm yeah…..I didn’t even realize it until he replied back to me. I’m pretty sure that’s not a proper sentence. My english continues to deteriorate…This is a common phenomenon I think.

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In my oh so disciplined italians studies I was informed there is no letter “J” in Italian. I can’t tell if this makes me angry or sad
I’m going to start a search for a schoolhouse rock kind of song that honours the letter j…

Xavier Rudd is on tour in Italy…most interesting date is at a guitar festival in Genova in late July…Am gonna have to do a bit of research, but a road trip might be in order.

and a late breaking thought…………didn’t Pearl Jam have a song “Brain of J”??? I think it was on Vitalogy or the album right after that, but I apparently have neither in my music collection…oh well…It was about JFK’s brain right?

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I have finished “The Wind-up bird chronicles” by Murakami. Absolutely great book. I went through it rather quickly (for me anyway). The prose is incredible especially considering it’s translated from Japanese.

The italians are complaining about the heat more than me. This keeps surprising me considering I’m usually the first to complain about it being too hot. To me it’s not horribly overwhelming, but I still have no fan so I’m not able to sleep enough. That’s at the top of my to-do list…

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After a hard night of drinking prosecco and wine at a colleagues on Friday night I managed to tear myself up early with the plan to head to Pisa. My intention was to visit a certain guitar shop there. Unfortunately they were closed…”causa matrimoniale” it said on the door…I assume that means “because of wedding”…Italian is so much easier than Deutsch.

Anyways so with nothing to do but sweat (men are men so they must stink -Diego)I dinked around Pisa for a bit and found a bookstore with a decent english section. I bought a couple books plus another Italian language tutorial thingy…It’s put out by Berlitz and is geared for native english speakers. I must say it’s pretty good compared to some of the other books I have (which are geared towards all non-italian speakers). Since the explanations are in English in the Berlitz book it’s fairly educational.
to my colleagues: Don’t expect miracles

Today I think I pretty much did nothing but read (almost done with my Murakami book), take a nap whilst watching a movie, and eat…and sweat…and take 2 showers (so far).

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