hi america

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh im so psyched to be back home! 26 hours traveling and i feel freaking crazy!

sleepers

ive been sleeping in airports and airplanes for about 11 hours so far. i got 12 more to go, yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

SUNSHINE

i cant see ANYTHING!

snowman

yaa

sonic youth rules! i hope when im old i still like to get dirty and make noise and hav a freakin good time.

santiago

hey yall,
im in santiago right now getting prepared to see sonic youth at a chilean soccer dome tomorrow night. last night we saw lee ranaldo live soundtrack a crazy documentary about a prison in valparaiso, the location for this show? in said prison.. it was wild. something i nor anybody else that was there will ever see or hear again. howz that fer special.....
its super hot here in santiago and we went to an awesome skatepark today but i cant skate so it was kinda like torture, but still it was cool.
ok
see you all very soon
bye

the way i feel

seww

we were gonna go down south to pucon to see the volcano, lakes, hotsprings, etc, but we cant get a bus for 2 days and the bus leaves at 930 at night and gets there at 930 in the morning and we already have tickets to sonic youth in santiago on sunday so i guess well probably just end up going to santiago for a couple days. on friday lee ranaldo from sonic youth is doing a live soundtracking for some documentary on a jail in valparaiso, sounds weird, probably will be weird, ill let you know. yknow those dreams you have when youre getting sick, like fever delusions? i hate those.

everyday is sunday

i suck

ugh

yesterday i rolled my ankle. the fun machine definitely just died.

playa ancha

valparaiso is a really purdy place. kinda. yesterday i ran into this guy from seattle that i met in buenos aires. he skates, and hehad a friend named carlos who does designs for a chilean skateboard company called stranger. super cool people. we went and skated a bunch of stuff today it was all good. anybody up for going to orcas island and camping for a couple days? is orcas in washington or oregon? i think that next week me and frederik are going to try to see the lakes district in chile, should be interesting.
chow bras!

news

so im coming home in a few weeks. im looking forward to being back. im going to continue writing in this blog until may 25th the actual time i was supposed to return because i think some noteworthy things will happen, happy, sad, interesting... life and its mysterious cycle will happen. viva la vida.

sup life and times of stinky mr grimes

see the peak that looks like a parrot head? we slept on that thing

the dg´s

so i had all these delusions of grandeur that i was going to try to take the pan american highway from valparaiso to the states but theres some crazy drug war going on in mexico apparently and i dont have enough money to pull it off, also i was maybe considering coming home early next month, but then again the price of a one way ticket home is more expensive than the two way ticket i bought already so the realization that ive come to is that im here im here to stay until may 25th and im going to have to live even more frugal than i have been. i dont think with logic sometimes or probably most of the time and i thought it was a better idea to fly home than to just spend the money here, its all the same in the end... that doesnt make much sense so i will go back to brazil in the beginning of april and try to move north for sunnier warmer weather and hopefully i will have enough to make it home from new york in may.
signing off
im a big dummy

official start of cat of the week

this is my friend, we took this picture and then later we found ourselves at a wedding party for these people and this was their cat. needless to say we freakin chilled with him so hard!!!!

HI

hi, i live in valparaiso now. i rented an apartment room for a scandalously cheap price. its in the same building as my swedish friend. its on the top of a hill. the landlords name is duck, hes silly. were goin to see sonic youth in santiago at the end of the month and ill be here til the 5th of april and then i think i might try to take the panamerican highway through central america all the way home. my friend and i are making a skate video based on the movie step brothers. get excited for that.
love you all
miss my dads and momz and real dads and moms too
ciao

oh man

i ate the worst sea food everrrrrrrr yesterday, it was like clam spectacular, and dude wouldnt take no for an answer he was like "youre gonna get the clam spectacular and im gonna give you white wine at 12 in the afternoon for free whether you want something else or not" best part of the meal was this cat staring at me with his tongue hanging out the whole time.

valpo

so its pretty awesome here in valparaiso , hate to say it but its pretty similar to san francisco but its like the mission everywhere. its been sunny and there are so many things to skate. the food is good, lots of seafood. i ate a crepe with chicken corn garlic and some sauce last night it was called a panqueque it was good. and another thing was french fries covered in eggs cheese and meat, yea no big deal. ive met up with my friend fredrik from sweden and im thinkin about stayin here for a month maybe, learning some spanish, kickin it on the beach, i think the waters pretty cold though. who knows? maybe ill end up taking the pan american highway back home, wonder how long that would take.
aight love you all
chow chow meow

buenos aires is nice

its real nice. there are parks everywhere and statues of madanna or i mean evita and men on horsies conquering lands and stuff all over the place. latin girls in america give latin girls in argentina a bad rap, is that offensive? sorry. ummm id definitely come back here. things ive eaten: big meat sandwiches called lomos, pizza with egg blue cheese roasted pepper ham artichoke hearts on it, a burrito (no one beats northern california burritos ISWEAR!) i was thinkin about goin for a steak at this place called la cabrera but i couldnt get a reservation. oh well maybe i try someplace else who knows. i dont.
well itsbeen nice here and hopefully valparaiso willbe more of the same maybebetter?!?!?!

ba

i ate a real argentinian burrito today. no big. tomorrow i move to palermo area of buenos aires, hopefully its nicer than this area. this area is like staying in times square, and who wants to go to times square let alone sleep there.

meat meat meat
dohd

just chillin on top of the world

just lone wolf howlin at da moon

hi

so im in buenos aires argentina after a 12 hour travelling day, im freakin exhausted, i miss familiarity.
i spent my last day in sao paulo with probably one of the most rediculous and boring norweigan girls ever. all she could say was "i think they should speak spanish in brazil because portuguese doesnt look good on me" but i completely redeemed myself at night by going to a churrascaria, a place where you have all you can eat MEAT. um it was freakin amazing. turn the light on the table to green youve got a never ending flow of pork, chicken, steaks, chicken hearts, sausages, butter, fried bananas i dont even know it was so freakin amazing! on top of the meat you could get sushi and pasta and rice and beans and so much weird stuff, i thought i was gonna die from being stuffed with so much animal.
well im off to see what buenos aires has to offer.
love you all

guess what?

so much rain. non stop rain. oh well. i leave for buenos aires on the 20th maybe the weather will be different there. i want to skate so freakin bad.

ya ya

heres a pretty cool tour zine of brazil quiksilver just released
lets go skate!

im baaaack

i dont really know, wait, i know exactly what i thought this trip to an island was going to be like: sitting on the beach drinking caipirinhas and just overall chiLLAN. well i was kind of wrong. it was intense hiking through jungles to chill on beautiful beaches, climbing up mountains to go camping on said mountains. i was not prepared.
we left at one saturday morning and arrived at the port around 7 or 8, we took a boat for about an hour and a half and got set up at our house we were staying at, it was pretty nice, really simple but nice and it had a purdy front yard. we slept for about 45 minutes and begun our first mission: hike to dois rios. dois rios is where 2 rivers that flow into the ocean border both sides of a beach. it was beautiful, but the hike was long. i mean it was hard shit hiking up paths and down paths in jungles for a couple hours then getting to an amazing destination chillin/sleepin for a couple hours and then going back the same way which was usually harder it seemed because i was either more tired or the up paths outweighed the down paths. when we got back to the house it was dark and we were sore tired and hungry, i could barely walk. we got got some food and went straight to sleep. bright and early our tour guide lukas who was super funny super cool wakes us up at 7 and we eat some breakfast, time to go to surf beach lopes mendes. although i was sore i was excited to see the sights and after breakfast i felt kind of ready. this place wasnt as purdy as dois rios but it was nice to chill at, the walk was even longer than the last and we stopped at like 3 beaches on the way. this all probably sounds awesome but youre like half enjoying this stuff when youre half zombified from hiking. there was an option to take a boat back to town from lopes mendes but lukas said a) the only way to experience the island is by hiking it and b) if you take a boat you are gay. and c)i didnt have any money to take the boat. the way my legs felt i could stand a little ridicule for riding a freakin boat, but alas we walked back. the next day i decided to sit the hike to caxadaÇa out, i felt like i wouldnt be able to do the next days camping trip feeling the way i did, i was a little sunburnt and my calves felt like they were going to explode. i needed to rest so i did, i dont feel like i missed out though so its ok. i just chilled with marcel (the hilarious owner of the house) he didnt speak any english but that didnt stop him from talking my ear off. we layed in hammocks listening to velvet underground songs and otis redding it was rad, this is what i expected to be doing. when everyone got back we made some dinner and went to sleep to prepare for the next two days. i felt great when i woke up and i was freakin ready to climb pico pappapapapapapagaio i dont know what it was called but it looked like a parrots head. we hiked at a 45 degree angle for 3 hours it waaaas so crazy so exhausting and when we got to the top where we were camping clouds or fog or whatever surrounded the view, we would miss the sunset and the moon and the stars. we set up camp and tried to get comfortable. it was me, lukas (tour guide) fabio (tour guide, driver) simeon (dread locked swede) and marcos: one of the strangest persons ive ever met. he was swedish and even thought he didnt know english he insisted on trying to speak it in like a semi coherent jibberish at all times of the day, he wanted to talk about food, gay music like kenny g, oh man he played some music that was so gay it was like fairies jumping around everywhere, i dont want to talk shit about this guy but he was so irritating i have to vent, he was always the last one to anywhere we went because he was taking pictures of ants or something and when we were on the mountain and the sun rose he just slept through it. whatever it was his trip he could do whatever he wanted, at one point in the night we were sleeping on the mountain and he wouldnt stop drumming on his sleeping bag and he got up and yelled "i want to eat the snowman." then in a different voice "i am the snowman. i am here to eat you." looking back on it it was pretty funny, at the moment it was just insane. anyways, to our luck the clouds had left us and we watched the sunrise in brazil. we were probably the first to see the sunrise on the island and maybe in brazil, it was awesome and worth every crazy minute of hiking. this trip was nothing like i thought it was going to be but it was amazing all the same. you can take easy ways to amazing places but the effort and blood and sweat that is poured on the trail to your destination is part of what makes it so much better. i dont know, i think i lost some freakin weight along with a little piece of my mind, and i can look back and say i hiked through a jungle and climbed a freakin mountain then slept on it even though i definitely thought i could never ever physically do that. whatever. i got pictures and video ill post soon when i figure out how. i wish michael was there to take photos they wouldve been way better than mine.
the theme songs for the trip were:
velvet underground - ocean
devendra banhart - queen bee
jorge ben - xica da silva
and
os mutantes - bat macumba (black majick!!!!!)

today

i leave for ilha grande for about 5 days. hopefully it will be sunny. lots of hiking lots of monkeys lots of chillan, this is gonna be a trip. i promise to come back with pictures and a tan.

here is another place

that is fun to chill at

if you

if you want to know what sao paulo is like for me this seems pretty accurate. i dont have speakers so i dont know whats said but all these places i go to everyday

durr

wheres all tha PIZZA!

thinkin bout

goin here

why not.

oh man

yesterday was such a good freakin day. not one drop of rain, the sun was blazin the city was beautiful... i guess, sao paulo is pretty dirty, but it has a charm about it. i just walked around my neighborhood called pinheiros and went to a flea market, got a little bit of sun, then there was a bar b que at the hostel and i had my first of many caiprinhas. they gud. today seems to be about the same, sunny sunny weather yes!

it´s

its hot and sunny and its freakin awesome! freakin later rain!

hmmmm

finally it wasnt raining today when i got out of class so i went downtown and skated for a bit then like clockwork it started to rain again. my board was broken anyways. a new board here (just the board) is 100 american dollars. ugh. we went to a brazilian skateboard premier at a cinema but the videographer forgot the dvd. i stood around and talked to a man named arthur about jorge ben and brasilian musical culture samba bossanova a bunch of other names i couldnt understand but wish i couldve written down. he said wed get a beer and see some music in vila madelena which is near where i am living. i took the metro back and walked home in da rain.
i learned that sao paulo has two seasons: winter, and now which is humid sun in the morning and rain in the afternoon. this is what global warming will be like at its mildest so best get used to it!

ugh

so im sick with some throat thing... i guess a gotta go through these weird sicknesses so my body is ready to go off. i go to drug stores, grocery markets, all sorts of places asking for vitamins, vitaminas, and no one has a clue what im talking about. so i went to a homeopathic remedy store haha and got some tea. it tastes horrible.

transformerz

last night the transformer on the power line outside my window exploded so crazily! electricity was blastin sparks everywhere it was so loud. dang dood it really goes off out here! tonight we had a bit of dry weather so i went and skated avenida paulista it was fun, but still no sun.

today

so.. yes i do have pink eye. it sucks. good news, its clearing up (i hope). bad news its still storming, when it clears up i go walk up the hill to skate and it starts raining again. i took the metro a little bit outside of sao paulo city to a skate park and as soon as i got out of the train it was raining hella hard. oh well. i took my first portugese class and its cool. learning stuff is easy and fun when you actually want to do it...
ok i think thats it
i miss all my bros!

its all about

animal collective and os mutantes right now


im about to go to my portuguese class. whut!

im hella east right now

its 20:34 zulu right now talkin to my momz on skype. more rain.....

buh

thunderlightningandrainstorms all day and night.

bife a paulista

when i woke up this morning the sun was shining bright and it was hot as a mother. we went out to skate and as soon as we got to the spot it started to rain so freakin hard. so i decided to go to the museum but i couldnt find it so i got a big plate of beef instead, beef rice and fries. hell yea!

500

sao paulo is over 500 years old... how old is the united states? 200? one south american city that is older than our entire western civilization!?!?!?!? i bet some t t t t twisted stuff has gone down here!

skate problemz

on the first day here i cracked my new board. its still skateable though, then yesterday my truck broke completely in half just from riding around... went to a skateshop and spent 90!!!!! american dollars on new trucks. WHAT!!!! so probably tomorrow my board will break and i will spend an unimaginable price on a new board...

language

the more i think about it the less i want to learn portuguese and the more i want to learn spanish. there are way more places that speak spanish plus Noe speaks spanish and i miss Noe at pizzaiolo.

ps

they put ketchup and mustard on their pizza here. WEIRD!

ola

oh man im tired. yesterday my friend jeorge and i went all over sao paulo skating. bombing hills was probably the best part. these streets go on for days! we went to old downtown sao paulo, it was amazing the architecture was crazy and... i dont know how to explain it, it felt like i was in europe even though ive never been there i imagine thats what an old european city looks like. after skating we went to avenida paulista and went to a club. well if youve been to one bar youve been to all the bars im going to assume at this point, its just who you go with that makes it fun or not. oh there was a live brazilian band playing there though it was pretty cool. i didnt get back until sunrise but that was pretty insane seeing the sunrise across the sao paulo skyline, i like da purty buildings. oh we ate brazilian pizza too.... no comment on that. all in all it was a pretty insane day that i am still recovering from.
i dont know what i was thinking coming here not knowing ANY portugese. its embarassing really. im THAT guy that comes to a country that doesnt speak english and expects them to speak english for me. i guess people do come to america and they dont speak english, but thats pretty irritating... god im a moron!
ok later yo soy muy cansado

woah

so sao paulo is pretty freakin nuts. its by far the biggest place ive ever seen, heard of , or been to. the hostel is nice, free internet, free breakfast, and the weather is nice enough we sleep with the windows open. speaking of the weather, it feels like its 70 or 80 degrees with mad humidity and its been cloudy every day and light raining, at least its not a new york winter! portuguese!!! i have to learn portuguese cause english is just not cutting it, i pretty much cant talk to anyone outside the hostel cause no one understands very well (anyone who says you can speak spanish to portuguese people and they will understand you was lying, odelay wey is not a proper form of what up here). what was i thinking! good news, theres a language learning school across the street from the hostel. i went skating up and down avenida paulista which is kinda like a giant times square with less flash, sao paulo is all business yo! and then i went to a giant park called.... ibirapuera, i had heard it was a good skate spot. the skate spot was a giant flat ground hall of smooth concrete and it was covered but that was pretty much it. flipped a couple tricks and this guy comes up to me, i dont know what he said and i dont think he knew what i said but he motioned to follow him over to the other skaters and i went, they spoke enough english to say `lets skate` so ive pretty much been skating with them all day today and walking around the park. im hungry now. later

i made it

there is no way to possibly explain today, today. this place is freaking gigantic. i rode a bus to a train station. found my way across like 20 different stations in portuguese to get to the hostel. its pretty awesome here. i have no idea whats going on, im out of my mind from having the worst flight ever. im gonna go to sleep for about 2 days. later

resume

i can, as of last night, add to my extensive pizza resume, drumroll, that i ate at the very first pizza place in america. WHAT EVER! bow down please to the lord of pizza! the pizza was alright i guess, it was a REAL NEW YORK PIZZA though, i guess im a west coast guy forever, 2 pac, big crust pizzas, and no snow. alright well im off to eat a steak the size of my head. later

check it out

chelsea hotel

whuh

look me in the eyes. look me in the eyes and tell me hot dogz arent the best, you will be lying to yourself and to me so dont do it. oh man. last night was wild, one thing about new york that was a nice little suprise is that the bars dont close til 4. i met up with my tour guide sarah lee at the hotel and she took me to mamas soul food kitchen which was rad. fried chicken, greens with garlic, broccolis, and some mac n cheese. whatever. no big. then we went to bar after bar after bar in the lower east side, then to a place called teany for vegan snackz. toast with beans = yes sir can i have some more? back to the cold night (my beard was freezing stiff) for birthday parties of pretty people i dont know and wandering around. it was great.
thanks to sarah for showin me around, and hookin it up with all the beverages and food.
now im off to find me a REAL NEW YORK PIZZA. spagettaboutit

new york new york

this place is crazy. crazy COLD! what the hell. the chelsea hotel is cool i can feel burroughs thinkin about crazy naked lunch stuff in my room. is that a good thing? i dont know. have you ever posted up at the madison bear i mean square garden and mean mugged a million people? i have. dont be jealous though. k later fed ex kinkos is charging me an arm and a leg for this nonsense.

new year

last night was my last night of work for soooo freaking long, its called vacation buds, time to go off. it feels good to have no responsibility whatsoever except to stay alive.

thanks to everyone at pizzaiolo for being super sweethearts and thanks to pizzaiolo and the bay area association of alcohol drinkers for helping me go to freakin brazil. hard!