Berlin (a visual argument)

Michael Scanlon

A Little Personal

So like OMG I have been SWAMPED with e-mail from fans asking me questions about this and that. Starting today I will to answer one a week, with the promise that I'll get to ALL of them in due time. This weeks question comes from Jenny in "LOST":

Q- YO Michael, I think you're fucking the shit. What is your headlining photo all about?
Jenni, LOST

A- Well Jenny, thank you for the dibs. That perched up on top of my page is a photo of my desk in this crap London apartment I once lived in. Showcased are important things pertaining to my life in London.

1) Vice. This was always free from my hot hipster barber at Cuts. While I allowed myself to afford 40 pound haircuts for the first time in my life, my magazine budget was limited to free copies of Vice.

2) Lucky Strikes. Kind of the ugly stepsister of cigarettes here in the States, Lucky Strike is more than acceptable in the UK. The packs open in two, like a book, which comes in handy for storing money when one's wallet is stolen on vacay in Milan.

3) Orange Nido card. This was the key to my house that I lost in a biweekly basis. Mine was particularly loseable, as a shortage of ink in the card-printing machine caused my skin tone to perfectly match the rest of the card.

4) Vintage fake Gucci wallet circa 1981. (Not to be confused with a fake vintage Gucci wallet circa 1981). A few years ago, when I made dangerous choices and lived a more elaborate life, I stole a beautiful kitschy fake Gucci clutch from a midtown fleamarket. Not only was it black, retro and questionably faux, it was the Babushka doll of bags. It opened to reveal several removable pieces of decreasing scale. I wore this clutch with abandoned caution, until I was the victim of a minor hate-crime at an East Village McDonalds in 2006. Long story short, some wigger threw a fountain drink at my head and told me something I already knew. So I ditched the clutch and ''gifted'' it to my sister but kept the inside wallet, which during my London-life, held all of my British pounds. In that half a year, I don't think the total sum of its contents ever exceeded 5 pounds (US $10).

5) Shit phone. Pay-as-you-go phones are insanely popular in Europe, so I figured that was the way to go. Luckily, my friend Pat had just returned from some time in London and passed his old phone on to me. On that first day's shuttle from Heathrow to my new apartment (imagine an excruciating bus full of NYU juniors generally behaving as overeager, bright-eyed, overly-caffeinated, BFF-making freshman), I opened the phone and read Pat's Inbox and Outbox, front to back, side to side. Imagine my chagrin to find a slew of increasingly dirty texts from "Jack". Now Pat is not gay, but as he is my best friend, and we have often been able to engage fruitfully in MY ideas of fun, I have always kept an open mind. The sudden discovery of these 'sexts' confirmed my suspicions and now put me at the center of one of my major life crisisses. A dirty, dirty secret. A few days later, after having blabbed to a select few ears, it dawned on me that "Jack" was lazy phonebook-entry for "Jaqueline" (whom I knew of) and so life went back to normal. On a side note, my secret-holding ability has improved dramatically.

6) Finally, my Macbook. Brand new, out of the box, this baby was my best friend and sexual partner. It kept my nocturnal (and midafternoon) life spicy, greeted me after a hard day when my clinically depressed roommate would not, helped me with homework solutions (JEZEBEL!), played "Creep" by TLC whenever I asked it to and sometimes distracted me from enjoying London with it's infinite ways to make me miss New York.

See how fun this can be? Send me questions, I'm sick of making up my own and want more interactive shit to think/write about. In the meantime...

JAM ON THIS.

Ethnocentricities.

Out of my five senior-year courses, I only do homework for my French class. That is because my French workbook is like the sassy, worldy, oftimes arrogant friend which I dissapointingly have yet to find in human form. Par example, a simple fill-in-the-blank from Chapter 8 of Debuts, 2nd Edition:

9. Je préfère la romaine. Je n'aime pas beaucoup _________________________ iceberg comme les Américains.

The answer is la salade.

TRANSLATION (courtesy of me)

9. I prefer romaine. I do not like iceberg salad like the Americans.

Yes, France. Americans do have an unsettling obsession with iceberg lettuce. I however, do not. So feel free to nationally subsidize a Parisian apartment and a romaine-eating lifestyle for me. I graduate in 4 weeks.

my. life. question mark.

If I wasn't so lazy and it were not 2am, I would bother to change that title entirely but alas I won't. These past two weeks have been full of Ed Hardy (thank you LA), sunburns, deuche-bag boys, surprise guys, schoolwork overload, a nifty new denim jacket, the occasional joint and sporadic Fran Leibowitz-induced fits of laughter.

What else is new, you ask?

My brother told me today that I have been dressing like an ugly New Kids On The Block member. I replied, "ALRIGHT!"

Ally McBeal is the new Sex and the City.

My hair is getting really long. (For me).


I have been spreading Brett Easton Ellis like California wildfire.

I have amassed an exciting but ultimately useless vinyl collection. I'm just missing the record player.

I am remarkably poor. Great, I have rediscovered my relationship with my flask.

Fingers crossed- meeting David Lynch tomorrow. WIll blog my success.

SPRING BREAK WOOT!

Considering the month (March), I thought it acceptable to forgo sunblock for my LA trip.

BUT...

We spent yesterday in Malibu, lunching and roasting in the sun, and now my naked body resembles a cubist painting.

on hiatus

On to another rainy destination: Croatia. I will be gone for the next week or so, moving on to Cinque Terre on Wednesday and Berlin on Friday. MISS ME.

Until I return, enjoy this Oasis cover. I thought the creepy/cute video was appropriate for Halloween.



HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

amsterdamned

I spent this past weekend in Amsterdam with Hannah, Kelly and Jen. Kate, Alex and Vinny were there also. Oh, and we ran into Mo with two of her friends as well as a couple other familiar faces from the program. What, are there like three countries that everyone goes to?

Anyway, the city was gorgeous and dark and quaint and seedy. I immediately thought of the Polar Express with a subversive strain of Edgar Allen Poe. In other words, I want to move there someday. Or at least have a home on the canal.

That home would have to be far away from Hans Winkler, the ''hotel'' we stayed at. I use ''hotel'' loosely because the space was what I imagine Guantanamo Bay to be. After the two guys who shared our room showed us their bed-bug bites, we were psychologically inflicting all sorts of itching onto our bodies. Then, I was lucky enough to find two bugs in my suitcase. We raised hell, passed on free drinks at the bar but accepted room changes. The second rooms were not much better. Hannah and Kelly's had a stained glass Jesus on the window, complete with angels. The room Jen and I switched to came equipped with the biggest, thickest brown spider I have ever seen outside of the zoo... or Petsmart.

Needless to say, sleep was at a minimum. And the bare-minimum of the hotel meant we simply had to pamper ourselves in other areas. That being food. Come sunday, Jen and I consumed within the course of an hour and a half: one space cake (shared), one large sandwich (her), one large carrot cake muffin (me), two belgian waffles with ice cream and confectionary sugar, two large noodle dishes at Wok to Walk, one white chocolate bar (her. gross), one half milk chocolate bar (me), one half dark chocolate bar (me).

We wandered the canals at night, trying to keep ourselves alive amidst the onslaught of cars, trams and a thousand bicyclists. Kelly noticed some ''pretty balloons'' which upon closer inspection proved to be inflated penis suits.



After the last traces of THC wore off and the final noodles in my Pad Thai were slurped up, I couldn't wait to get out. Traveling is starting to get on my last nerve, a shitty, ungrateful complaint I know.

Croatia in four days.

buh-byecelona

Back from Barcelona, a stunning city which I hadn't nearly enough time to appreciate. The first two days were rainy and sad, as Chris and I got ourselves lost in alleyways stamped with prostitutes and forgotten bars.


We made a stop at El Fundació Joan Miró, the shrine to one of my favorite contemporary artists. It's funny to note how many tourists flock to the Picasso museum in Barcelona, when I always found Miró to be more interesting, aesthetically and intellectually.


The paella was insane. Say hello to my little friend.
(I should note that I spared him, his shell was too daunting for my hungover lunch)

Finally, after days of searching for the "beautiful part of town", Chris and I stumbled upon it just beyond the gothic quarter. We couldn't stay long though, as we had a smelly bus to catch.


Next up, Amsterdam.

share it fairly but dont take a slice of my pie.

I took this photo a few weeks ago, on a very important day.  The irony killed me.