Damien Galeone

Departure Board: 2 hour Delay  

Noticing this is accompanied by the scattered groans and epithets of what are surely my future co-passengers. I shouldn’t have looked up at it. No good comes from looking at a Departure Board.

I let out a batch of vulgarities tailor-made for this occasion (and which would make Hunter S. Thompson reach for his thesaurus and wince) and continue walking.

I can’t read in airports. Everyone I know gets to the airport, checks in, sits his or her ass in a cozy spot, or on a cozy barstool if they have the scratch, and reads. They read or do Sudoku or play Angry Birds or, I guess, search for Pokemons. Or eat them, or serenade them, or do whatever the hell someone does to a Pokemon.

In any event, as an avid reader, people assume that I eagerly use this time to settle into a good book. After all, airport time is usually a couple hours of dead time. If you’re not wearing a jacket with wings on it, there’s almost literally nothing you can do to prepare for what you’re about to do. You are most probably not going to be asked to refuel the plane or check its tires or tick items off a list on a clipboard.

But still, I can’t read.

All I can do is walk. For me, preflight time is a buildup of nervous energy. It starts the day before when I tap my toes and bounce my feet underneath the table. Then I can’t sit still and clean the flat to put that energy to use. Then I toss and turn in bed imagining the plane leaving terra firma or bumping around in thick clouds.

By the time I am in the airport, I am channeling so much nervous energy that the only thing I feel comfortable doing is walking the airport in a tracked loop. I create a beaten path of my steps, passing the various stores and shops – duty free, relay, Blue Praha – whose employees at first smile at me, then cock their heads at my consistent appearance, then eye me with suspicion, then ignore me completely.

So I walk. My fitbit steps add up. I stop occasionally to watch a plane do the incomprehensible by vaulting into their air as if it were nothing, then I walk again, shaking my head in disbelief.

And every now and then I look up at the Departures board.

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I am standing two people back in line.

I am watching with awe as the man in line goes through this transaction as though it is the first time he has ever purchased goods in a shop. He seems amazed when the cashier asks him for money, digs through his bag for a few long seconds until he finds his wallet. Then he digs through that for a few long seconds until he finds the money. Then he digs through the coin purse until he finds the right change.

This kind of thing no longer surprises me, since it happens every single time I stand behind someone in line at a shop. For some reason, when Czech people buy goods in a shop, they appear surprised and confused to the point that it would suggest that they are actually aliens in borrowed human bodies.

I have no idea why.

All I know is that I hate this man. Read the rest of this entry »

My Cat the Lush

While I have met probably 5% of my friends’ kids, I have seen thousands of pictures of them. For I have Facebook, and Facebook is child land. It’s summer time, so the pictures are of kids eating, swimming, posing with their Little League teams.

This is not a complaint, just an observation.

Some of those pictures make me smile, some make me wax nostalgic for childhood. And some make me so mind-bogglingly happy to be childless that I can’t even see straight.

There are so many benefits of not having kids. Travel. Sleep. Sex. Social life. Impromptu naps. Money. To list more would only make me unpopular. And, by the way, I am very well aware of the fact that there’s a huge huge list of benefits and rewards of having kids, so don’t think I’m ignorant of that fact. It’s all about personal choices.

One of the benefits of not having kids is that I am nobody’s immediate live-in role model. I know that an enormous aspect of kid’s developmental behavior is watching what their parents do. What they eat, smoke, drink, how they talk, react to stress, everything. And since I can be an idiot at times, I am glad nobody is watching me and mimicking me.

Nobody is watching me scratch my body in two spots at once. Nobody is listening to the knitted Afghan of vulgarities that my mouth creates when the internet drops off. Nobody is watching me sip a late night whiskey or chew tobacco, or pick my nose.

Nobody.

Except my cat.

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Here We Come

I fly to London tomorrow afternoon, where I’m meeting my sister. Then to Paris, and then Lyon. It is the day before my holiday. So if you know me, you know I am eagerly preparing by packing and making lists.

My To-Do list is in sections (special occasion). There’s things to do, things to clean, things to buy, things to download, things to email, and things to write in my notebook before I leave.

Yes, I am a dork.

One of those things to download is a basic French phrase guide. Just some basic phrases that will relate to the French my need for directions, a toilet, or inquire about how much that baguette will cost to shove in my face.

But in general, I am not terribly concerned about learning the language. It’s sort of language free travel for me.

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School has let out and I’ve celebrated by wearing the same pair of shorts for the last five days. I don’t really seem to wear shoes these days, and I lounge and eat a lot of watermelon in front of my fan. My shower is a dry basin in a distant land. I crave baseball. I have exactly no idea what day it is today.

Summer is here.

I’m feeling a bit nostalgic for my summers as a kid. I’m talking something like 1985 or so, when at eleven years old, I spent a great deal of my time in no shoes, no shirt, and no air conditioning. My mother brought my siblings and I to the community pool a lot, we ate peanut butter & jelly sandwiches and drank Capri-suns. We got ticks and poison ivy and stitches. I watched the Phillies get slaughtered by anyone they shared a diamond with, and was as brown as a ferret from July until September.

With the Fourth of July today (I looked at a calendar), this nostalgia has been exacerbated. And I wondered if perhaps a good old mid-80s Fourth of July picnic celebration might help me scratch that nostalgia spot.

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Mňau

I recently read an article on the 7 things that will happen after living in another country for 10 years. The writer made some very funny and very accurate observations in terms of national identity, loyalty, and even language.

I commiserated with some of her points, especially when relates to eventually feeling like a foreigner in my own homeland.

While it was an interesting article, it was written by a woman who moved from the U.S. to the U.K. So, aside from tricky northern dialects, occasionally differing lexicon (boot of a car, lift, flat), idioms that make no sense (Bob’s your fucking uncle?), and prepositions, there was no linguistic difference.

So I put together my own list of things that happen after you live in a different language for a long time. If you have experience with this, please feel free to add your thoughts and points in the comments.

You become a language chameleon

By this, I mean that you become very versatile in terms of using your native language. At the first hint of linguistic misunderstanding, you can instantly grade your language, describe complex concepts and things with basic adjectives, and get your point across using 1 syllable words.

Additionally, you are far more aware of what kinds of words, phrases, and grammar pose difficulty for non-native speakers of your language and you avoid them or take steps to make sure they are understood.

You speak Pidgin

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Lies!

It’s very late on a Saturday night. OK, very late by Czech terms. Around 10:30 pm. The pubs are closing, the city’s doorways are dark. It’s Prague.

We make a fundamental Saturday decision: let’s order a pizza.

If you are American, you are saying to yourself: uh, yeah, so?

If you are Czech you are saying to yourself: who in his right mind would order pizza? And after 6 pm?

If you are an American who understands how things work in the Czech Republic and the various issues involved with this seemingly simple transaction, then you saying to yourself: oh man, this is gonna go downhill fast!

We go onto a delivery website where you can order food from dozens of restaurants aggregated for convenience. But if you know the Czech Republic, you know that the road to the lavender-scented oasis of convenience is almost always laden with insurmountable inconveniences.

The troubles start immediately in various slapstick comedy ways. The card isn’t accepted at this place. That place is only take-out after 9 p.m. (even though it says delivery and it’s on a, you know, delivery site), this place deletes all of our information and order after we forget to check the box saying “no utensils,” we try again, but by then (14 seconds later) it’s closed.

All the while the featured restaurants on the site literally disappear one by one. They are closing, because it is so (Czech) late. We scan the site now with growing unease, this was such a good idea a mere half hour ago, when we were leaving the pub. The pub that had a menu filled with edible delicacies that we eschewed in lieu of pizza. And now we just want someone to bring us pizza on a Saturday night. Simple pizza. Read the rest of this entry »

One night, eleven years ago, I was bartending in Pittsburgh. It was after I had decided to move to Prague. Three guys came into my bar, friendly, dialect and fashion choices suggested they were local and rural. After a passing comment from a waitress about my imminent departure, the guys inquired as to where I was moving.

“Prague.”

Crickets.

I added: “In the Czech Republic.”

Head nods.

The first said, “Dude, are you crazy? There’s some serious shit going on over in China these days.” While I was trying to piece together how Chinese unrest would affect the Czech Republic, the second chimed in. “Prague ain’t in China, moron. It’s in Russia.”

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If you are a reader, then you know I have been battering the web for a seeming eternity. You probably don’t know exactly how long since you surely went insane to my blabbering ages ago.

But believe it or not, it’s been 5 years.

To celebrate, my blog and I had a little party. We had cake (read: bourbon). After cake, we decided to revisit some of our most visited and enjoyed posts. We laughed. We cried. We went, “Wow. Why do people like me again?”

Then we revisited some of our earliest posts, just to see how far we’ve come together. That was a tough rock to look under, so we had more cake until the cake was gone and then we went to our local shop and got more (different flavored) cake.

I realized that I have learned a lot in the last 5 years. For example:

People search for insane things

I used to think I was slightly deranged and perverted, but then I started a website and was privy to people’s search phrases.

Japanese girl in wall porn (runner up: Japanese girl in her wall)

Scarlett Johannson Death Mask (Should I call the police?)

Dead Pig Cartoon (I don’t know. Just gave me the willies)

Photo of Me Naked (wondering who  ‘me’ is kept me up for two nights)

I like bologna sandwiches, I like bologna bologna Damien Sandwiches (the sheer volume of disturbing ways to interpret this is boggling)

Collin Popkey (The horror. The horror)

The most disturbing aspect is that these phrases led these people to my blog. So, who’s more disturbed: the one who searches or the guy they found at the end of their search?

Who knows? Probably an FBI hit list.

Nothing can keep Russian spam out of your blog. Nothing.

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The B Monster came out of the closet just for this post

The first time I ever heard the term “Gay Friendly” in reference to me I was somewhat surprised. It went: “Someone asked if you were gay and I told them you were just gay friendly.”

Hm.

As a bartender in Pittsburgh, I had heard the term “Gay Friendly” before, and due to my cat-like mental reflexes + context + superhuman wits + asking a gay friend, I was able to piece together what it meant.

But to hear the term used about myself was a bit odd.

Honestly, it was more surprising than hearing that someone had questioned my sexuality. I was sort of used to that. I had lots of gay friends, they taught me how to buy clothes and make martinis. I liked showtunes and was usually single. It’s essentially the same specs as now, except that I am forty-one, have a cat, and once went on a Southern Italian holiday entitled “Spritzerfest” with two friends who happen to be a gay couple.

I get it. I also don’t give a shit.

But I’m “gay friendly?” Now that was odd.

While I understood, even appreciated, the sentiment – context + superhuman intellect strikes again – I have to say that I was a little shocked. You see, I never considered myself gay friendly; I have always just been friendly.

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