Day09 == The lunatic is on the snow

I’m sitting here listening to the second fattest guy in this hostel tell me about how iron in the earth and water south of Anchorage causes urban concentration.

For the first time tonight, Julio and I just opened up and started getting along even better. I recorded some videos of him, and then we started singing and I recorded it, and THEN this fat guy, Mike, came out and Julio started making fun of him behind his back. I don’t know if I got much footage of it, but it was hilarious. He (Julio) kept pointing at the guy’s boots and rolling his eyes. Julio is hilarious. So I put new batteries in my camera and went on a recording spree, and so here’s what happened. The first two video is basically me making fun of this guy and him not picking up on it, the second video is basically me trying to capture a funny conversation they were having about “saxophones” and “sex-o-phones” (unfortunately I missed the best part) and the third video is Julio telling a story about how he took a photograph of a bunch of young skinheads in Germany once and they chased him into a library. I only got the second half of it, but what you can see is him describing how you only have to pay 1 penny to get out of some punishment for taking pictures of skinheads in Germany (twice). Then Mike starts talking about something I couldn’t care about if there were a gang of skinheads chasing me down.

I apologize for the number and length of these videos (I also apologize for my incredibly greasy hair). I thought it was hilarious at the time. I hope it still is.

Other than this, the only thing I’ve done today, other than waste hours and hours at the Kaladi Brothers coffee shop, was walk my butt down into downtown Anchorage just so I could get lost, get dispirited, and walk home. I gave up at a CARRS/Safeway grocery store, where I sat on the floor feeling sorry for myself, until a cop came up and yelled at me. He told me to sit in the pharmacy, “but don’t sit there for like an hour!” I walked home after that, and my left knee is killing me cause of it. Here are some pictures I took of that, incl. a church and a neat tunnel in a place called "Valley of the Moon Park":

Julio just told me a story about getting mugged three times in one day by groups of black South Africans in Johannesburg. Apparently, groups of 6+ foot tall men would walk up and instantly encircle him, cup his mouth, violently embrace him and shake him down in seconds. The first time it happened, he was alone on an movie theater escalator and they stopped the escalator and advanced from below and above. “I had confused, you know. I am feeling very bad,” he says about it. The great thing about Julio’s stories is that they’re half stories and half charades. He acts out his stories and supplements his English with fantastic gestures and pantomimes. The poor guy got $300, his passport and all the gifts for his family taken. Then it happened again in the mall. The third time he just spread his arms, shook his head and said, “Nothing! It’s all nothing!”

“I have some Indian friends – natives…. Soooooo crazy!” Now he is narrating a story about his Native American friend, Elmer, who is “very good friend,” but who tried to get Julio drunk (Julio is temperate) and tried to involve him in a rotating harem of loose women. I’m going to stop now, and skip write to the conclusion I had already written for this post, or else I’ll never stop.

Julio’s thing is he edits photos for people. He really, really likes Macromedia Fireworks (the program). Here is something he made for his family and showed me. Isn't his son Estefan cute?

(p.s. if you click on it and wait for it to load, all of the images will animate.)