Jun 26, 2008

225? what it is?!!!!

today i had 225 "unique visitors" to the blog...most of them by way of Cindy McCain...thank you Cindy-poo...thank you, you SS fraulein looking motherfucker...

tonight i ate octopus, tonight i ate more octopus than you can imagine...

octopi in my belly says "gurgle gurgle, vote OBAMA!!!"...

today Steve D. saved my life...

by letting me borrow his ipod.

i've been listening to Radiohead and Lee Perry and Hank Williams all morning. it was a physical experience. i couldn't stop weeping while listening to Radiohead. i couldn't stop headnodding while listening to Lee Perry, and i couldn't stop smiling while listening to Hank. i haven't heard good music in 35 days. this is all very psychosomatic, thank you Steve D. my ears are dancing.

about to go to the beach with Joseph and his with Rita and Susan and Steve. about to exfoliate 2005 style. today will be the last time i swim in the sea. but first, i must fill my belly with yogurt and almonds and cheese.

and you wonder where i get it from...or, my mom is the most beautiful woman in the world...

...hecka

"I'm on the net making arrangements for Dino and me to go to Las Vegas for 5 days the first week of August...can't wait even though it will be hecka hot at that time..."

--Carol Sakkis

i love you mom, can't wait to hecka see you...

your johnny

update...

Thanasis Maskelaris found my phone today during his morning swim in the sea, no joke. it's sea-soaked and dead. the only numbers i have by memory are my parent's and Julia's. i'm feeling lost and not relieved. the tides have turned. i'll be asking you for your numbers on myspace for sure. but maybe not as a bulletin. maybe just person by person.

today i want to walk.

last night i dreamt about Brandon Brown telling me to take metamusol.

Jun 25, 2008

not sure...

but i may have lost my cellphone to Poseidon this afternoon...if so, and if i don't find it by the end of the Symposium, i'll be forced to send out one of those "hey everybody i lost my cellphone so send me your number..." myspace things...i feel both worried and cleansed...this would seem contridictory.

today i rubbed clay all over my body and thought about Brandon Brown...

Jun 22, 2008

13 Greek Axioms...

1. contrary to the Mediterranean Diet, Greeks are fat and sallow

2. eurotrash is a lifestyle

3. find me an honest Greek cab driver and i'll toss your salad

4. Greek beer tastes like cemetery water

5. Greek cigarettes taste like donkey manure

5. donkey manure smells like old man poo

6. just because there are steps doesn't mean they lead anywhere

7. you will take lots of pictures of rocks

8. you will regret taking those pictures

9. if you speak Greek they will speak English

10. Greeks can make fun of your Greek accent but you cannot make fun of their English accent

11. if you have to pee, go in a bush, no one cares

12. never trust a restaurant called Zorba's

13. don't say "opa!"

Jun 21, 2008

Nikos Gatsos where are you?!!!

i'm on Amorgos right now...it's insanely beautiful. i think i'm one of maybe 15 tourists on the island...staying in a tiny port village called Agiali...will be here until Monday morning when i'll catch a 6am boat (ouch!) to Paros...and then it's the final leg of the trip where i'll drink and work and round table and eat and swim a little and get bummed out a little that it's all over and then it's back to SF to see all of your beautiful faces...has SF been as cold as i've been hearing? i've also been hearing it's been warm? what's the deal, clue me in...

by the way, RODNEY KOENEKE HAS A POSSE AND I AM HIM...

Jun 19, 2008

thanks and update

to everyone who send me emails! they were awesome and appreciated. keep em coming please...

yesterday i hiked a volcano and then went swimming in some sulfur laced hot springs and then hiked up about 600 steps that really led nowhere worth all that work and sweat, and then went wine tasting and then drank some beers and watched the Greece/ Spain game and went to bed and dreamt about newspapers stacking up on my stoop...

yesterday i also got on the wrong bus and got gaffled for 2.50 by the bus driver and then dead sprinted about a mile back (and got bloody feet, no socks, Vans shoes = bloody feet a la Curt Schilling...only mine were for real) to where i boarded the wrong bus in the first place and caught the correct bus JUST (and i mean that) as he was pulling out...yesterday i went off on a greek bus driver, i called him a lot of names including "dickhead" "motherfucker" "asshole" and finally "bra" as in "thanks a lot bra..." it's weird but i can feel old asshole Johnny coming back, maybe this is a good thing while i'm in greece, maybe it's not, but i'm feeling pretty agro lately...i hope i can shed that skin before i head back to the States (i hate when people call "them" "the states" but i feel like a pilgrim calling "it" "America"), i've been successfully reformed for a couple years now, i'd hate to regress...

yesterday i met a woman with a raspy voice, and i was telling Erin this, but isn't it weird how a raspy voice on a girl can either be hella sexy or hella gross? in this chick's case it was definitely the latter...like sea-salt on an open would...and then i actually heard her say, frustrated "doesn't anyone around here speak english?!!!!" she was from NYC...

i'm going to head to Paros tomorrow afternoon, the symposium starts in a couple days and i think i've seen all that Santorini has to offer (that's actually not true at all but for my budget it is)...hopefully i'll be able to hook up with Susan G. and Steve D. and get "opa"...

i haven't tried any more characters yet...my accents are pretty good but not that good (i can do a mean cockney, i sound like Mike Skinner, i can do a decent Aussie but i sound like a cartoon character, i can do a really good Greek-speaking-English dialect). i need to think of another American character. but then it's also good to know your geography when you're playing a character, and i pretty much only know the Bay Area, not sure how interesting it would be to play a construction worker named Tommy-boy from Antioch...i mean, it might be.

oh and, i've been going commando (free balling) for the last 2 weeks...it's really been an eye opener...Caty Dutchface would be proud, my brother is proud.

Jun 17, 2008

update

today i rented an ATV and headed to Parissa, about 12 miles out of Fira (main town)...it was just as i remembered it, black sands, hot beach, warm, clear water...omg right?

so, i went for a swim, and then had a read, and then had a smoke and a drink of water, and then another swim and then headed back to my towel...5 people had posted up near me so i decided to play Huckleberry Fin and say hello...they were Swedes, on vacation, duh, 2 couples and one dude named Arvid...all very nice people, i told them my name was Jeff Kent and that i was with the SDPD (San Diego Police Dept.)...they were very interested in my job...i told them i had been on the force for 3 1/2 years but was still considered a bit of a "rookie" due to my age...i had to kind of explain what a rookie was...i told them it was like a backup position player on a football team...they seemed to get it...they asked me if i had ever shot anyone and i said yes...i told them that despite what they may think it actually sucks to shoot someone...i told them i aimed for the guys right leg during a violent bank heist but ended up hitting him in the butt...i told them i got a lot of shit from the guys for that and they seemed to understand...i'm a rookie afterall...after that we all played a lot of paddle ball (something that needs to be exported to the states along with Frappe drinks) and swam for a bit more...they kept asking me if being a cop was like they showed on TV (i gather they have a lot of Law & Order in europe), i told them it was pretty much exactly like that except it takes the dectectives in my district a lot longer than an hour to break a case, they laughed a lot at that...we made tentative plans to meet up tonight for beers at a local pub, Murphy's Irish Pub...this is going well so far.

i'm about to head back to the hotel for lunch and a nap.

love

Jun 16, 2008

update

i found a bar on Santorini that plays baseball, so that's where i'll be if you need me.

i'm switching hotels, i'm in the cuts and i took a cold shower this evening, i'm not okay with this. i'm going to rent a "quad" tomorrow morning and cruise around the island pretending to be an Australian named Reese.

Santorini is amazing, i was here in 2005 but i forgot, it's really amazing here.

do you want to see pictures of my mustache? do you want to see pictures of me with my mustache in a bath towel? you'll have to wait until i get back. so sexy.

baseball starts in an hour. the sign says "MLB on CW"...i'm not sure what that means, CW as in the CW network? didn't know they broadcast baseball, didn't know they broadcast to Greece, they don't. but i asked the lady at the bar and she said "yeah yeah, baseball...9pm, you come..." i said "fa' sho..."

today i ate salami and cheese and nuts and pears, it was amazing. i ate the salami all John Favreau style (cf. Swingers, cf. Vince Vaugn) gnawing at the bitch whole. i had no knife. i had no drive to find a knife. i fell asleep watching the Lakers/ Celtics game, Basketball is my Benedryl, knocks me right out, who won? oh wait, i don't care...disclaimer: i probably spelled "Favreau" wrong and "Vaugn" wrong and "Benedryl" wrong but i have no spellcheck. i have no drive to check the spelling.

i'm off to baseball and shop talk.

love,
johnny

...

today i landed on santorini. i got hoodwinked at the port by the hotelier, i'm not exactly close to Fira. about a mile 1/2 out. it's okay i guess. they have a swimming pool that i intend to use a lot.

i grew a mustache. it looks pretty good i think. clean shaven with a full blown mustache. everyone on Ios seemed to like it. my skin is brown and my eyes are green and i'm wearing a green tee-shirt with a giant octopus on it and i have a mustache. i feel like i'm glowing.

last night i dreamt about strange creatures and 'shadow people' (and how shadow people have been among humans for thousands of years, it was rendered in my dream by petroglyph portraits of shadow people on cave walls, you ever seen a shadow person? it sucks...), the creatures were divided into 3 subgroups. 1. would only animate when you looked at them, they were petrified otherwise (like the bats in Castlevania), but when you looked at them they would beeline 2. would paralize when coming in contact with water, i have an image of me diving into a swimming pool to escape one of them and as soon as it dives in after me it totally freezes up and sort of glides underwater at me like a statue, harmless 3. they looked like regular people, i think most of them looked like regular people, but there was something demonic about them, they reminded me of the vampires in that movie The Hunger, the end scene where they have the cocktail party with a bunch of regular people, their friends and collegues from the university etc, and then when everyone is drunk and relaxed they just start attacking, they start eating all their friends, blood everywhere, they are junkies, that's the correlative, if you haven't seen that movie you should, the final scene where Lily Taylor is walking down the street covered in blood after gorging herself at the party is amazing, it's really horrifying, and for some reason the fact that the movie was shot in black and white makes it even more affective, the best treatment of vampires/ addiction i've ever seen, very realistic, but yeah, the 3rd creatures were like that, just suddenly turning on a group of us, and they were our friends, they were some of you, it makes me a bit sick to think about it.

i'm thinking of staying on santorini for 3 nights, don't know if i will, but i'd like to. i think i'll call susan gevirtz to see if she's on paros yet. if she is then maybe i'll go to paros early. i'm pretty much craving communication with friends. i hate to say it but the greek language sounds foul to me at this point. i've been watching the occasional episode of Entertainment Tonight just to hear American.

if you're my friend please send me an email at merkoneus@yahoo.com, i could really really really use your love. it's not all as pathetic as it sounds but i miss you guys. please write, it would make me very happy.

what's going on on the 4th of July? are we going to do Dolores Park again? i hope so, last year i spent the day and night with Emma and my brother and Kim and a gaggle of folkers and then Becky later on that night. i was telling megan a while ago that i think that night with Beck was one of the happiest nights i've had in San Francisco. there was something in the air, besides fireworks and smoke, it seemed like SF was in a good mood that night and everyone could sense it.

hey Zik, hey Tory, hey Brandon, armand, logan, steve, truman, leslie, megan, erin, jay, trevor, james, emma, adam, david, nevine, louisa, cousin-julia, billy, jonathan, megan-billy's, dim...i miss the old crew, i miss seeing you guys, let's get together a lot when i get back, it's summer in SF, let's try and treat it that way.

i think i'll go to the grocery store now to buy some fruit and some beers. i've been mostly surviving on fruit and yogurt these last few days. it's too hot to eat. it's 12:52pm and it's already 100degrees out. i'm feeling overwhelmed.

hope everyone is sleeping tight and staying warm in SF. remember to turn off your floor heaters when you leave the house. i read a story about the sometimes drummer of Rogue Wave dying in a house fire in oakland a few months ago from a bunk floor heater. that sucks.

and please remember to write. i promise to write back. if if just to drop a line and say 'hey.'

love always,
john

Jun 11, 2008

...

things done in the last couple days...

walked 15 miles on scorching hot greek road after dunebuggy broke down

developed the most gnarly blistered feet from said walk that you've ever seen

hitchhiked my way to a gas autobody shop where they spoke no english (thanks to the pappou and his bewildered grandson for picking me up)

managed to borrow a gas can from greasy greeks at autobody shop and get dropped off at a gas station

limped down the road for about 5 miles hitchhiking again until a truck full of albanian construction workers picked up me, jumped in the back of their truck and and smoked stogs and drank beers with them for about 5 more miles until they got to their work site (thanks to the truck full of albanian construction workers for picking me up)

hobbled down the road feeling my feet melt and slosh around under massive blood and puss filled toe/heel/ball/foot blisters hitchhiking some more until a metrosexual greek stopped his Fiat to pick me up...he drove me another 2 or 3 miles where he dropped me off and wished me luck...walked the remaining mile 1/2 to my brokeass dunebuggy where i proceeded to weep with joy when i filled the gas tank and started the engine...drove back home spinning donuts every chance i could get...

my feet are finally starting to heal...i took pictures, they are forthcoming on flickr.

here's a little rap i wrote for Julia (the girlfriend), it kind of summerizes what's up...

""in my dunebuggy mashing around town/
in my dunebuggy i got skin so brown/
i go "beep beep" and the ladies go "HEEEEY...."/
but i keep on rolling, lean out and say/
'i got a dunebuggy and i'm feeling so free/
got a lady back home who ain't a breezy/
so keep on walking and i'll keep on riding/
my dunebuggy's fast like an airplane flying/
so next time you hear me go 'beep beep' i'm honking my horn to let you know you're weak'

so, i'm just in my dunebuggy mashing around town/
got my brother at my side and you know he's down/
eating hella gyros and a bag of french fries/
got fruit in my belly so sweet i feel high/
my skin might be brown but my legs are so red/
aint no atkins in Greece i'm eating oil and bread/
putting salt on my eggplant and salt on their game/
cruising in my buggy fly like corey haim/
i got a license to drive and not an ounce of shame/
spinning donuts on your ruins you're yelling "stop!" i'm yelling "lame...!"/
but now my dunebuggy's broke and i'm walking down the road/
got villagers mean mugging with steady blisters on my toes/
i stick my thumb up in the air and i'm showing some thigh/
got to hitchhike 12 miles and that ain't no lie/
a pappou picks me up and he says "yassou!"/
i say "then milou hellenika" and he says "that's coo..."
so we mash to the station to get some petro/
fill the gas can tops and i say "lets go..."/
pappou drops me off about 6 miles out/
so i'm hitching again and feeling hot and i shout/
'goddamn these greeks and their goddamn cars/ goddamn these people and their weird ass bars/ goddamn their ruins and goddamn their beach/ goddamn their ferryboats and my blistered ass feet...'/
so i'm walking again and out of nowhere there's a truck/
they stop, lean out and say "malaka what's up?!"/
turns out their albanians and they're going my way/
they got a job up the road and they invite me to parlay/
so back of the truck i'm laying full spread eagle/
we smoke some stogs, drink some beers, assuring me it's all legal/
they drop me off a mile out but they saved my life/
if i had to walk that bitch again i might have taken my own life/
so my feet are mangled-much looking like the face of freddy krugar/
to top it off i'm fisting coffee from the station sans sugar/
but anyway/
so, i fill my gastank and start the damn engine/
hop in the seat feeling like racecar legend/
now i'm back on the road and i'm ready for a nap/
it's been long ass day steady dealing with hella crap/
i've got visions of blisters dancing through my head/
i've got anger in my belly and a face full of dread/
so i'll say it one more time and i'll say it without shame/
"goddamn these greeks and their goddamn cars/ goddamn these people and their weird ass bars/ goddamn their ruins and goddamn their beach/ goddamn their ferryboats and my blistered ass feet...'/
all in all, i'm rolling eurotrash but i miss SF/
i miss my girl 'mucho mucho' feeling sad i even left/
so in conclusion i think there's only one thing left to say/
Ms. Julia you're the best i'll see you 27 DAAAAAAAYS!!!..."

word to your moms...
xoxoxoxoxo"

now i'm on Ios, i've made some friends, with bar owners and barbacks, which is sort of deadly but apropos for Ios...last night they fed me the girliest of girly drinks, it was pink and called "Madame Butterfly"...i drank maybe 6 of them and then some beers and then went to the local "rock bar" Orange and listened to Audioslave...it was, um, interesting...and then i walked home around 3am and turned on the tube and fell asleep to Beastmaster...it was epic.

i think i've reached the threshold of being sick of greek food, i kind of just want to eat some tunafish salad and call it a day...today i think i'll eat honey yogurt and a pear and an apple and maybe if i'm feeling up to it a peach. the peaches are good here, and so it goes.

oh and, my brother ate 3 gyros last night at 4:30am before bed, and so it goes.

Jun 6, 2008

two new books that i haven't written yet but am going to...

1. My Collection Of Tapes- will be about tapes

2. Skateboard- will be about skateboards

both books came to me in dreams...

Greece is pretty nice, i read Satre's The Age Of Reason and got scared...but now I'm reading Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin and enjoying myself...

yesterday i was spinning donuts in a yellow dune buggy inside some ruins...i almost fell into a giant black sinkhole so i got the hell out of there...

Naxos is full of gay sunburned swedes and Greeks that look like Dave Atell...i love it.

I've reached breaking point with "Greek coffee," so now i order "filtered"

my legs are red my body is brown and Europeans are generally filthy eaters with no sense of personal space (hello French people curling up to my legs on the ferry!!!)

despite what Anthony Bourdain says don't eat the ham from street vendors...despite the stereotype, Americans are extremely courteous and respectful travelers. Germans, Australians, The French are not...the English are pretty good too.

today i might rent a Vespa and eat horiateki...