Like many people with an interest in stories of magic and adventure, I watched The Princess Bride so many times growing up that if I ever close my eyes I can still hear the dialogue echoing around in my brain. Everyone loves this movie. When I was on the fencing team back in college, I would always ask new recruits how they got interested in fencing, and they’d always shrug and say, “I don’t know,” and I’d say, “Come on, it was Princess Bride, right?” and they’d nod and say, “Yeah.” So it’s exciting to hear that there’s a new Special Edition DVD out that features brilliant commentary by my friend
American Pop
I just passed a little Dutch kid wearing a T-shirt that said, “The Next Brad Pitt.” I thought that was pretty funny. (Though just between us, I think he’s kidding himself.)
Yeah, in case you were unaware of this, American pop culture has a global reach. For example, a Dutch act called the Beatfreakz has been receiving a lot of airtime here. (Are they showing this in the U.S.? I have no idea.) See if you can spot the subtle creeping influence of American pop culture in their latest video.
Anyway, that T-shirt made me reflect that since coming to the Netherlands I have no idea what’s going on with Brad & Jen & Angelina. Or Nick & Jessica. Or Tom & Katie. Or Paris & whoever her best friend is this week. I can’t even begin to describe how ecstatically happy this makes me. Of course I have no interest whatsoever in the vapid tawdry lives of these people, but in the U.S. I can’t buy a frickin’ gallon of milk without getting an unsolicited update on them. It makes me feel violated. But at the local grocery store here in the Netherlands, the tabloids are mercifully quarantined in the corner. It’s bliss. Sometimes I wonder if they have any different celebrities that they dish on over here. Fortunately, I will never have to find out.
So to any American developers out there: You build a grocery store where it’s possible to shop while avoiding the tabloids and you’ve got yourself a customer. Are you listening?
That word
So the other day I was walking in the woods and something popped into my head, and I thought, “Oh, it’s like a … like a … oh, what’s the word?” And I couldn’t think of the word. It was driving me nuts. I spent about 45 minutes trying to come up with the word, to no avail. Though I did manage to come up with five or six other words that I felt pretty sure were somehow related to the word I was trying to think of. (One of them was “chiaroscuro.”) I finally got home and googled the definition and got the word: palimpsest. Oh course! Palimpsest, how could I ever forget you?
I first started noticing this word a few years ago in some books I read. I didn’t know it, and was too lazy to go look it up, so I just started guessing based on context that it had something to do with light shining through or around something or maybe making shadows. I think this is because somehow “palimpsest” reminds me of the phrase “penumbras and emanations” from Supreme Court jurisprudence. This misimpression became so fixed in my mind that I still have to remind myself sometimes that this isn’t what the word means. (And hence the association with “chiaroscuro.”)
What it actually means is: “A manuscript, typically of papyrus or parchment, that has been written on more than once, with the earlier writing incompletely erased and often legible.” I remember the first time I looked it up my first thought was, “What a ridiculously pretentious word. Who would ever use that in a conversation? Give me a break.” (Okay, I guess actually my very first thought was, “Huh? There must be some mistake. I was sure it had something to do with light, etc.”) But I’ve subsequently been surprised at how often that word captures exactly what I’m trying to say. So then I can say, “Hey, it’s like a palimpsest!” and whoever I’m talking to can say, “What the #@%! is a palimpsest?” Which limits the word’s communicative value somewhat.
But it occurred to me that if I blogged about it, that would probably double the number of people I’m ever likely to run into who know what a palimpsest is. So next time I use it you’ll know what I’m talking about. Just don’t go spreading it around. It’ll be our little secret.
Or maybe you all knew it already and I’m just way behind the curve.
The Ambassadors
This cracked me up. This guy has set out to read the entire MLA list of the 100 best novels and write a capsule review of each one. He’s not a fan of The Ambassadors by Henry James. This was my favorite part of his review: “[I]n 1903 two chapters were reversed. It was a blatant error. The chapter that took place in the evening was followed by the one that took place in the morning. In the former chapter, a character referred to a conversation that hadn’t happened yet. A horrible error you think, right? Henry James fans would be complaining and yelling, right? Well, it remained unnoticed for FIFTY YEARS. You heard me; for half a century people were talking about and analyzing this book, forcing students to read it, and never noticed that two of the chapters were in the wrong order. The error was finally noticed by a Stanford Undergraduate, Robert Young, in 1950. Literary James scholars were anxious to get a quotation from this brilliant young man who had made such a significant discovery. What words of praise for James would their new hero give them for posterity? Let’s quote Robert Young: ‘There must be something radically wrong with a writing style that has managed to obscure an error of this magnitude for so many years from the probing eyes of innumerable readers, publishers, editors, critics, and even the author himself.'”
Wikipedia Factoids
Recently, while consulting Wikipedia, the source of all human knowledge and wisdom, I randomly came across some interesting trivia.
Did you know that Shel Silverstein, the beloved children’s poet, lived at the Playboy Mansion? Neither did I.
Nor did I know this stuff about Vincent Van Gogh: “Legend has grown up about Van Gogh. One of the myths is that no one recognised his work. In fact it was praised in Le Mercure de France and he was called a genius. He was invited to participate in Les Vingt, an exhibition of avant-garde painters in Belgium and Monet said that his work was the best in the show. Toulouse-Lautrec challenged someone to a duel because they had insulted Van Gogh’s work. Another myth is that he cut off his ear, and although he did cut his ear, it was not the whole ear but part of it, at least the lobe and probably a little more with a diagonal cut. Van Gogh is sometimes thought of as the mad painter, but he could not paint during his disturbed episodes, only the time in between. Sometimes it is said that he did not sell any work, or only one painting in his lifetime (The Red Vineyard at Arles, 1888; Pushkin Museum, Moscow), but this is stretching the point, as he did receive some commissions, which are sales, and he also bartered work for meals etc, which is another form of sale.”
Also, anyone ever play Ultima 7? (Perhaps the greatest computer RPG of all time.) Back in my formative years, the maker of the Ultima series, Origin Systems, was locked in a death struggle with rival Electronic Arts. Origin was known for uncompromising quality and for creating games that were true works of art. Electronic Arts was known for creating games that were unplayable dreck, but the company had deep pockets and spent massive amounts of cash on marketing. The storyline for Ultima 7 concerns a sinister extradimensional entity called the Guardian who is able to influence events through the use of three giant artifacts — a cube, a sphere, and a tetrahedron — which the player must destroy in order to save the world. Until I read the Wikipedia article, I never made the connection between these artifacts and the Electronic Arts logo [dead link]. Ha! Good one! (Sadly, in the end Eletronic Arts bought out Origin, and the long-running Ultima series declined drastically in quality and quickly died.)
WORLD CUP ACTION STARTS TODAY!!!
Ohboyohboyohboy. WORLD CUP ACTION STARTS TODAY!!! YEEAAGGHHH!!! RRAAAWWWRRRR!!! RRRRRR!!!!
Sure, you may be saying, “Dave, why all the excitement? Doesn’t this so-called football merely consist of ninety minutes of a bunch of grown men running around in the grass trying to kick a rubber ball into a net … and failing. Isn’t it true that any time it looks like someone might actually do something interesting he gets fouled or called offsides?” But that just shows what a stupid American you are. If you were here in Europe like me, you’d understand what it is that makes this game worth rioting over.
At the grocery store, every magazine has something World Cup-related on the cover (even, no joke, National Geographic). Here in the Netherlands, people display the color orange to show their national spirit. The streets are clogged with orange pennons, and, I shit you not, adult-size orange lion costumes are on sale everywhere. Sure, buy it for the World Cup, but wear it year round.
If you’re in the U.S. and want to get in on World Cup fever, I’d say that your best bet is probably to wake up at 4:00 a.m. and tune into ESPN 8 (“The Ocho”).
So about the Netherlands
So about the Netherlands.
Before you get too excited, I’m not in Amsterdam. I’m staying on the campus of a scientifically-oriented college on the outskirts of the country. Cow pastures make up a substantial proportion of the grounds. There was also a week-long torrential downpour when I first arrived, which limited my adventuring significantly.
Anyway, about the Netherlands.
They eat chocolate sprinkles on their bread at breakfast. Brilliant.
They also eat ham and cheese. Lots of ham and cheese. Seriously, if you ever secretly fantasized about eating ham and cheese three meals a day, then man have I got a country for you.
They have really nice bike paths. The bike paths crisscross the whole country, and have their own traffic lights. More people ride bikes than drive cars. Everywhere you look you see 80-year-olds bicycling around.
They have intermission for movies. They literally stop playing the movie right in the middle and make you sit around for fifteen minutes. This is supposed to force you to buy more popcorn and soda. This can get pretty tedious, especially at a movie like X-Men 3 where you were already pretty bored.
Marijuana is sold legally here in Head Shops. Despite this, the students I talked to had trouble thinking of anyone who smokes it (which would not be the case among college students in the U.S.). It’s the same thing with alcohol. I think the drinking age here is like 16 for beer, and even that is barely enforced. The result is that alcohol just isn’t that exciting. Students here are aghast at stories I tell about going to college in America. They’re like, “You mean people drink and vomit, and then keep drinking and vomit again, and then pass out and have to be taken to the hospital to have their stomachs pumped?” That’s basically unheard of here. And I say, “Well, only on weekends. Mostly.”
The students wanted to know what Americans think of the Netherlands, and I had to break it to them that the answer is “They don’t,” and that 90% of Americans would no doubt accept this statement at face value: “I’m Dutch. That means I’m from Denmark. It’s a small country in Eastern Europe nestled between other small nations such as Holland, the Netherlands, and Scandanavia.” Despite stuff like this, the students told me, “People will think it’s cool that you’re American. They’ll think you’re rich.” To which I responded, “Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.” Well, actually I didn’t. But I thought about it.
Oh yeah, and they also call a Quarter Pounder a “Royale with cheese.” But you probably knew that.
Hour of the Wolf Part Deux
I’ll be making my second appearance on Jim Freund’s Hour of the Wolf radio show on July 15th. (On WBAI 99.5 FM, a local New York station.) I’ll be chatting about my recent adventures and reading my new short story “Blood of Virgins.” I’ll try to post clips from the interview to my website. You can also listen to clips from my previous interview on my Media page.
Audiobooks
It still amazes me how many people I talk to who don’t realize that you can use an iPod to listen to audiobooks. I don’t even know how I ever survived before my iPod + audiobooks. It allows me to combine two of my favorite activities — going out for a walk & reading a book — into one Voltron-like uber-activity. It allows you to exercise and get smarter at the same time. Back at USC I worked out a system that worked pretty well. I like to listen to a complete short story without interruption, so what I’d do is go out for a one hour walk and listen first to a short story, then fill up the remaining time with whatever novel I was working on. (Recently Stephen King’s The Cell and Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife.) I get my audiobooks off Audible.com. Their selection of short stories is mostly classics, so I’ve been listening to a lot of those (Joyce, Chekhov, Saki, classic detective and horror stories). Here in the Netherlands, I’m living right next to a wooded park, and I’ve really been getting a kick out of heading out in the early evening and listening to a classic horror tale while wandering the woods. The setting sun and cool breeze rustling the leaves really adds to the atmosphere. A story I just listened to that I really enjoyed was William Hope Hodgson’s “The Voice in the Night.”
Update: braintraumered correctly notes (in the comments) that MechMuse also offers audio content, and that they feature work by talented new writers. That reminds me, I configured my Myspace profile to play an audio clip of my fiction when you visit it, which I think is kind of cool.
Subpoenaed
I just got a subpoena to go testify against my mugger. The subpoena was sent to my old address, even though I paid the post office there to forward my mail. (I want my dollar back.) Fortunately, my roommate is still living at the same address, so he received it, otherwise I probably never would have seen it. I haven’t heard anything from the Court for four months, now they need me to appear on Tuesday to testify. I’m in the Netherlands. Needless to say, I probably won’t make it.
Guy … de Maupassant!
So the local Dutch computer guys fixed my laptop. This did not, contrary to earlier reports, require replacing the hard disk. In fact, I think it only took them about 20 minutes. In fact, I think all they did was run checkdisk or something and that fixed it. I’m glad I got all my precious, precious data back, but I’m still vaguely irritated with IBM tech support for telling me that I needed a new hard disk when I didn’t.
I had all sorts of unforgettable observations this week that I would’ve blogged if I’d had my laptop, but now I can’t remember any of them. Oh wait, here’s one thing I was thinking:
I’m going to be reading some short stories by Guy de Maupassant. I’ve never read him before, don’t know if he’s any good or not, but I can say this with some certainly: he has the most kickass writer name ever. Seriously, Guy de Maupassant, how frickin’ cool is that? I would totally change my name to Guy de Maupassant if he hadn’t preemptively stolen it first. In fact, if I ever find and/or invent a time machine, the first thing I will do is travel back in time to kill Guy de Maupassant, so that I can appropriate his name without anyone being the wiser. Then people would all be like, “Wow, aren’t you that Mr. de Maupassant?” and I’d just be all like, “Please, please. Call me Guy … de Maupassant. That is, please call me ‘Guy de Maupassant.’ The whole thing. It just has this ring to it, don’t you think?” Then I would be famous.
Well, it’s late. More trenchant commentary later.
Goodbye Computer
So last week I’m sitting in LAX and it’s a half hour until my flight to the Netherlands. I pop open my laptop to copy pertinent information about my itinerary from an email into my spiral notebook — information without which I will have no idea what to do when I land in Amsterdam. (I hadn’t had a chance to do this earlier, and I couldn’t just print it out because my printer was already in storage.) And … my laptop won’t boot. Not even in safe mode. It just cycles continuously between the loading Windows screen and a Blue Screen of Death error message: “UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME.” That doesn’t sound good. But I’m able to use my cell phone to get my itinerary information.
Then I call up IBM tech support. They say I should replace my hard disk. Thanks, guys. (I sometimes suspect that instructions for tech support workers read: “1. Ask customer to describe problem. 2. Instruct customer to reboot computer. 3. If problem persists, instruct customer to replace hard disk. 4. Thank customer for calling. 5. Hang up.”) They say that I may be able to retrieve data off my computer. This is an even bigger disaster than usual because I had just moved out of my apartment and tossed out most (hopefully not all) of the hard copy backups of some stuff I worked on this past semester. And of course, all that stuff’s in storage in the U.S., so I can’t dig through it and check to make sure I’ve still got everything.
Blurgh. At least the laptop’s still under warranty (it’s less than a year old), but working this stuff out from the Netherlands is a serious hassle.
On the other hand, my bicycle tour around the Netherlands was cool. If I ever get a working laptop around here, I may post more about it. One of the photos did come out looking suitably authorial enough that I decided to toss it up as my new author photo on my website.
Netherlands
I’m leaving in a matter of hours for the Netherlands, where I’ll be hanging for the next couple months. This past week has combined the joys of wrapping up a semester’s coursework, moving out of an apartment, and packing for a summer trip abroad, all in one. So I didn’t really get a chance to say goodbye to everyone, but I promise to look everyone up when I get back in the fall.
L.A. Times Festival of Books
A car is parked in front of my building. In the extremely grimy rear windshield, someone has written, “I wish my boyfriend was this dirty.”
Anyway, this weekend I went to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, which was more massive than I could have possibly imagined — hundreds of writers, thousands of attendees. It stretched across the whole UCLA campus. It was amazing that so many people showed up to talk about books, but the crowds were just out of control.
I showed up Saturday around 1:00 p.m. I would have gotten there earlier, but I’d had an appointment at noon in Santa Monica to get my car serviced. While my car was parked on the street recently, its headlight was bashed out. I know nothing about the driver other than her name, but I feel oddly certain that she is a sorority girl who was driving her SUV while talking on her cell phone. I got to the dealer and they said they didn’t have the part. I said, “But I talked to you last Thursday and you said you had it.” The guy explained, without the slightest trace of apology, that they’d been bought out by another dealer who had made them send back all the parts they’d ordered and reorder them from a preferred manufacturer. So that was a total waste of time (and gas).
Anyway, I arrived at the Festival of Books. I didn’t really know what else to do, so I went to an information booth and asked when and where on Sunday the T. C. Boyle reading would be, since I was supposed to meet people there. The woman asked if I had tickets. Tickets? To an author reading? I’d never even heard of such a thing. She explained that I should swing by the Ticketmaster booth and pick up tickets, if I could. That sounded ominous. I walked for twenty minutes to the Ticketmaster booth, where I happened to run into my friend Lindsey, who explained that all the tickets had been given away already. I said, “So I can’t get into anything at all?” She said, “You can wait in the standby line and if some of the people with tickets don’t show, they might let you in.” That didn’t sound so promising either. On the upside, Lindsey had an extra ticket to see Joyce Carol Oates later that day, which she gave me.
We waited in a standby line and managed to get in to see a panel on “the Book Biz,” which consisted of a lot of the usual doom and gloom about how book readers are dwindling and how it’s harder and harder to get published if you’re not a celebrity. Which led someone to mention James Frey, which led someone else to remark, “Wow! We made it through an entire half hour on a panel without mentioning James Frey.” Which of course led into a discussion of the girl from Harvard who seems to have accidentally cut-and-pasted numerous long paragraphs from someone else’s novels into hers. (She got a half a million dollar advance, by the way.)
I tried to get into a panel on writing young adult fantasy, but I didn’t have a ticket and there were about 500 people in line ahead of me, so I bailed on that one and wandered around the booths for a while. Then I decided I was going to damn well get a good seat for Joyce Carol Oates, so I went and got there before anyone else and camped out at the head of the line. Later, I struck up a conversation with the woman next to me, who gave me the lowdown on the festival. She and her husband have come every year for the past 11 years. (Even moving from L.A. to Austin four years ago hasn’t stopped them from coming.) She told me that the organizers hold back a large number of tickets to distribute each day, so if you come first thing in the morning you’re virtually guaranteed to get whatever tickets you want. Good to know.
Joyce Carol Oates was great. My favorite part was where someone asked her about her blurbing materials that some might consider lowbrow, such as the Hellboy graphic novel. She maintained that Hellboy, and many graphic novels like it, have far more literary value than many prose novels that are published, such as almost the entire “chick lit” genre. She also confessed that there wasn’t much reading material around when she was growing up, so much of her childhood was spent reading comics such as Tales From the Crypt and MAD Magazine.
Sunday I showed up bright and early and got in line for tickets. I was about twentieth in line. The woman in front of me turned around, and it was the same woman I’d been standing next to in line the day before. I said, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.” Then I saw someone I know from USC, so I hung out with him for a while and got tickets to everything I wanted. I saw Berke Breathed, creator of the newspaper comic Bloom County, one of the most brilliant creative works of all time. I also saw Larry Flynt, creator of … well, you know. Actually, Flynt told a pretty funny story. For years Flynt’s greatest nemesis was this televangelist. When the televangelist was eventually caught in a hotel with hooker, the police also found a copy of Hustler in the room. Then I went and saw two veterans of the ongoing Iraq war, one of whose memoir I’d read. At one point, the other soldier said, “There’s been a lot of criticism of the media that they’re not providing ‘balanced’ coverage of this war, not reporting the good along with the bad. But look, if you want good news, go report on Disneyland. War is a completely f***** up thing. It’s not about good news.” Then I went to T. C. Boyle’s reading, and actually got invited to tag along to dinner afterward with him and his friends and family, which was lots of fun.
YYYYEEEEAAAAGGHGHGHGHHH!!!!!!!
YYYYEEEEAAAAGGHGHGHGHHH!!!!!!!
I just sold my newest story, “Blood of Virgins,” to Realms of Fantasy magazine. Some of you may know that I am insufferably fond of this story, and have put just sick and terrifying amounts of time and energy into writing and rewriting it. I’m thrilled as hell that it’ll be appearing in such a great magazine. You should all go subscribe now so that you don’t miss it.
Gay Talese
I’m doing a workshop this week with legendary journalist Gay Talese. The publicity all over campus calls him quote: “the most important writer of his generation.” (But that quote is never attributed. Doesn’t it matter who said it? What if it was his mom? But I digress. At any rate, he’s a big deal.) I read my article out loud. We were only supposed to read the first 4 pages, but he kept prompting me to keep going until I’d read the entire thing. He said, “Wow. That was great. I wanted you to keep going because I was sure you were going to crash and burn sooner or later, but you didn’t. This is publishable.” I felt pretty pleased, since that’s really the first nonfiction piece I’ve written. And just to show that he really knows what he’s talking about, he also said that I was obviously “unbalanced” and “a dingbat.” And that’s just from reading my 12-page article that’s not even really about me. Now that’s insight.
Though he did seem to be under the impression that I’m an aspiring comedian aiming to do radio humor or something like that. I didn’t get a chance to explain that I mostly write morbid, surreal short fiction. That has me thinking though. If other people’s reactions are any indiction, somehow in the last five years or so I seem to have become funny. I don’t know how this happened. I never thought of myself as a particularly funny person. It’s occurred to me that my fiction mostly reflects an older worldview of mine — that of a sensitive, intense, and powerless loner. That’s not really who I am anymore. Now I’m a lot more social, easygoing, and confident. (Though ladies, I am still extremely sensitive.) I’ve been wrestling lately with whether my fiction should be doing more to reflect that shift of worldview.
Derek James + Blues Traveler = Awesome
My buddy Derek James will be opening for frickin’ Blues Traveler this summer. How cool is that?
But Her Popsicle Melts
So the other day I was driving in my car and I heard this song on the radio. The chorus went like, “I heard it’s cold out, but her popsicle melts. She’s in the bathroom, she pleasures herself. Says I’m a bad man, she’s locking me out. It’s ‘cuz of these things, it’s ‘cuz of … these things.” I thought, Hey, that’s a pretty cool song. I wonder what it is? So later I went to my handy google and was like, Okay, how did that song go? Let’s see, something about … popsicle … bathroom … pleasures herself. That ought to get it. I don’t know what I was thinking. That search brought up like 500 million sites, none of which, as you can probably imagine, had anything to do with song lyrics. Fortunately, I was able to recollect another section of lyrics and found the song, “These Things” by the band She Wants Revenge, which is indeed a pretty cool song.
Sticks and stones
So I was at a barbeque last weekend and the conversation turned to the subject of: what bones have you broken? I have never broken any bones, despite having played lacrosse and rugby, because, in case you were unaware of this, I am #@%&!*@ indestructible. No, actually, I attribute this merely to good luck and the fact that I tend to excuse myself and go read a book whenever someone you’re hanging out with suggests something like, “Hey guys, let’s all jump out of this tree onto these rocks and see who can make the loudest noise,” which, if you’re male, happens about every three days. Anyway, after 45 straight minutes of broken bone stories, I started feeling kinda bored and excluded from the conversation. I also realized that if you’re heard one broken bone story you’ve heard them all. No, literally, they’re all exactly the same. Here is the monomythical broken bone story: “So I was doing something stupid/innocuous and all of a sudden I heard something snap, and I said, ‘Hey guys, I think I might have broken this,’ and then someone said, ‘Nah, it’s probably just jammed/dislocated. Here, I’ll pull it back into place,’ and they tried to do that and it hurt like hell. They said, ‘Better?,’ and I said, ‘Not Really,’ so they tried again. And again. And again. So then I went to the doctor and the doctor said, ‘It looks like there’s a lot of bruising here that happened after the injury,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, we thought it was just jammed/dislocated and we tried to pull it back into place, and the doctor said, ‘DON’T DO THAT!'” I heard this exact same story about twenty times. I even heard one person tell it about her finger and then tell it again about her other finger. Hey, the fact that it’s about a different finger does not make it a different story. Maybe you have to be part of the broken bone club to understand this, but if someone said to me, “Hey, I think I may have broken a bone,” I would think that my first instinct would not be to say, “Well hey, just let me yank on that for ya.” And if I was the one with the broken bone, I would not say, “Okay, sure,” more like, “You get the #@*% away from me.” What is it that makes all these people think they’re doctors? Did they all stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night? I just don’t get it.
Close call
I think I almost got mugged again last week. I was walking home from a fancy banquet thrown by my department. I was with my friend Erica and another friend who’d had too much to drink and was going to sober up on my couch before she drove home. Two kids on a bike pulled up near us, and the kid on the handlebars leapt off and rushed us. I tensed. The kid stopped, glanced at us, then turned around and hurried back to his friend. Our drunk friend said, “Wow, that was weird.” I said, “Come on,” and we walked away, toward the emergency call box. Erica said, “Here,” and handed me her heavy U-ring bike lock to use as a club. The kids rode past us and then off down the street. Another student came up to us with his pepper spray out. He said, “Were those guys going to mug you?” I said, “I don’t know.”
I figure what happened is that they saw our drunk friend and assumed we were all drunk and would be easy marks. It was party night on Frat Row, so there were huge crowds of drunk students out on the sidewalks. Then when the kid saw that I wasn’t drunk and was extremely wary, he changed his mind. Or maybe they were just playing a prank, who knows.
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