Hooray for Hollywood

Today Rick told me one of the best stories I’ve heard in a long, long time. It’s about one Ms. Pam Grier (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Foxy Brown, Coffey, Scream Blacula Scream). Apparently back in the 70’s, Ms. Grier was shooting a movie called The Arena, in which she played a badass sex bomb gladiator. In the movie’s finale, she was supposed to ride a giant horse up to the camera, with no bit and no reins.

Pam rides her horse up to the mark and stops. A cheeky crew member decides to play cute by smacking the horse on the ass. The horse freaks out, gallops off the soundstage, and starts streaking through the studio. Pam, who is riding bareback in a tiny leopard skin bikini, must grab the horse’s mane and hold on for dear life.

In a sublime coincidence, FELLINI is shooting Amarcord on the studio that day. He’s shooting some very subdued scene, when suddenly the now-topless, afro-ed, leopard-skin bottomed Pam Grier charges onto his set on a rearing white horse, screaming at the top of her lungs. Fellini stops the shoot, falls to his knees, and screams “My dream come true!”

Sweet Nothings

It’s pretty strange to live in a place where you absolutely do not speak the language in any way shape or form. Here is my acquired Hungarian vocabulary so far:

Good Morning (but not good evening or goodbye)
Thank You (but not please)
Do You Speak English?
Yes/No/Good
Hello/Goodbye, for use on telephone (cheating, as it’s actually just “Allo”)
Pardon (“pardon”)
Soda (“szoda”)
Sex (“szex”)
1, 2, 3 (but not 4-10)
I would like…(point to the thing you want)
Tomato
Milk
Pancake

This actually gets me through a surprising amount of interactions. The language barrier, however, keeps rearing its head in other ways.

For instance, on the second floor of our building is a mysterious office. It advertises itself with a cartoon of a smiling dinosaur in running shoes, but is constantly haunted by miserable young people. They smoke cigarettes sullenly, tag up the first floor stairwell, and avoid your gaze when you pass them in the courtyard. Outside the door, boys get in shouting matches with their fathers, couples comfort eachother, and young girls hiss urgently into their cellphones. Rick and I decided early on that it must be a rehab center or a parole office. I’ve even wondered if it was a family planning clinic. Well, yesterday we saw our landlady and asked her to solve the mystery. “It is a lady,” she started confidentially, “She helps the young people…with these things…how do you say this…where you give the money to the state…the tax. She helps easy with the taxes, for all the people. Her sign say, so easy the taxes, so quick, I make you good price, please I am better than the other lady.”

Today Rick reported that a woman in front of him in line at the Diszcount ABC bought 20 candy bars, all different brands and prices, then tried to pay with Hungarian food stamps.
RICK: The checker started yelling at her.
SARAH (not thinking): What did she say?
RICK (giggling): VASHTY VASHTY VASHTY VASHTY VASHTY VASHTY VASHTY!!!

At least we can’t hear anyone making fun of us as we stumble and fumble our way through life’s simplest interactions. Thank God for small mercies.

Back in Budapest / M’s Wedding

I’ve been in the US for the last two weeks, first in Arkansas to see family, then in California to be in a dear friend’s wedding. The time flew by; lost in wedding land, doing arts and crafts projects, and running around trying to help with logisitics, I forgot to do a lot of things I should have (and didn’t get to see a lot of people I wanted to.) Just a couple hours after the wedding, I got on the plane. Two red-eyes and a 12-hour layover later, I’m finally back in Budapest.

There were a lot of great things about this wedding—besides seeing my oldest friend get hitched—dancing with friends’ mothers, watching people who haven’t seen each other since high school hook up, crying a lot, laughing a lot. Our Top Stories:

Bridal Hallucinations
At the rehearsal dinner, Sunshine, the best man’s wife, told elaborate stories about hallucinating on her wedding day. Sunshine remembered feeling like everything around her had expanded to enormous proportions, that objects were far larger and denser than they appeared, and everyone was moving in slow motion.

The morning of her own wedding, Mel told us she was feeling absolutely normal, almost disappointingly so. Our preparations passed quickly, and suddenly it was time for her to go get married. The bridesmaids rode together in a rental car, and Mel sat by herself in the back seat of the fancy wedding car, in her wedding dress and veil, for twenty long minutes, up, up, into the hills.

We finally reached the wedding meadow and piled out of the car to check on Melissa. She looked radiant, wide-eyed, and juuuust a little, well, off.
“How are you doing, Mel?”
“I thought I was getting ready to go on a space ship…” she said in a curiously musical voice, laughing a little,
“but I don’t have a space suit…I really felt like I was going into space…deep breaths…” Laura and I exchanged looks: Daaaammmmn!

Luckily she was completely together by the time she walked down the aisle, and a goood time was had by all.

Groom Stories
Ryan, the groom, is a magician and Capoeira brown belt. The highlight of the wedding, for me, was when a Brazilian drum corps showed up and rocked the reception. Ryan has a lot of great magic stories, but his latest may be my favorite.

Ryan belongs to the Magic Castle, a members-only magicians’ club housed in a spooky old LA mansion. It can only be entered by secret passage, and only by those who know the password. One of the Magic Castle’s main attractions is a piano played by a ghost. To prove it’s not just a player piano, the ghost takes requests, and claims to know every song ever written.

Not too long ago, Ryan brought a bunch of Brazilian friends to the Magic Castle. They loved the idea of the ghost, but doubted that it actually knew every song every written. What about Brazilian songs? Would it know those, too? The Brazilians spent a long time huddling, brainstorming a song guaranteed to stump the ghost. Finally, their spokesman hurried up to the piano, glowing with excitement, and blurted out: “Girl from Ipanema!”

Needless to say, the Brazilians were amazed when the ghost knew their song. Ryan tried to explain that it’s a popular song in the US, too, but they just kept insisting “But that’s a Brazilian song! A very famous Brazilian song!”

Seeing Old Friends
I haven’t seen Joan in a long time. As always, she had a million crazy stories about her life (driving around Europe doing street performance out of a converted ambulance, for example. You know, the usual.)

The Story of How Joan got her Famous Chicken:
When Joan and I lived in New Orleans I was terrified of her chicken. (Chickens who live alone with people are often scary: See “Rooster in Love With a Boot, Rowan’s.”) I never knew why Joan owned a chicken, but at the wedding it all came out: she bought a rooster in order to teach it to play piano. Of course.

“I wanted to teach it to play piano, like in old state fairs, you know? Where you put mirrors or whatever on the keys, and it plucks them. But I fed my chicken regularly, and so it was not musically inclined. I had to work with what it was already good at, which was eating.”

So Joan made the chicken her fortune-telling partner. She’d ask an audience member to put its hand on the chicken, and the chicken would start shaking. Then the chicken would walk over to a big box of fortunes, pick out one, and bring it back to mildly impressed client. Add some witty banter, a couple chicken jokes, and a crazy outfit, and you’ve got yourself an act. After the fortune was read, and the client tried to pay Joan, she’d tell them, “I didn’t do anything, pay the chicken!” The chicken would take their dollar, walk back over to the fortune box, and throw it in.

“That was the beginning of four years of bad behavior,” Joan sighed.
“On the chicken’s part?” I said, remembering its beady little eyes peering out at me from behind her screen door.
“On my part,” said Joan, “The chicken behaved quite well, once it got a job. There’s nothing like understanding the value of the dollar to make a chicken get in line.”

A Tale of Two Uncles

A true story, as told to me yesterday by my uncles over dinner in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

The heroes of our story are my uncles Kit and Jimbo. Kit is a clean-shaven, silver-haired doctor with a rather wild past (it’s possible he has a rather wild present, but if so I’d rather not hear about it). Back in the mid-80’s, when we lay our scene, he used to look a tiny bit like Dan Quayle. His brother, my uncle Jimbo, is a Russian military history scholar with a big belly and a big red beard. He enjoys drinking heavily, laughing loudly, arguing vehemently, and listening to Elton John. The last part is the most important; Jimbo loves EJ with a passion unswerved by his stern disapproval of gay gay gayness.

In the late 80’s, during Bush the Elder’s first presidential campaign, Jimbo, Kit, and their childhood friend Kyle flew into Dallas for an Elton John concert. Kit and Jimbo did this sort of thing so frequently that they had developed a pre-EJ-concert tradition, which unsurprisingly involved drinking. They were picked up at the airport by a limo, and drank a bottle of vodka en route to Trader Vic’s. At Trader Vic’s they drank as many Scorpions as time would allow, then bought a case of champagne and drove a nearby lake. By the time they reached the lake they were “feeling pretty good.” Jimbo wandered down to the water, speaking loudly to himself in Russian and drinking vodka out of the bottle, and Kit followed swigging champagne and singing Elton John at the top of his lungs.

At this point, the limo driver approaches their friend Kyle. “Excuse me, sir,” the driver says timidly, “those are important people, aren’t they?” Kyle, who has a reputation as a trickster, remains stone-faced. “That’s right. Do you know who they are?” “Well,” ventures the driver, pointing at Kit, “That one’s Senator Quayle.” “Yes,” Kyle confides, “And that red-haired man is the Executive Assistant to the Russian Ambassador.” The driver can hardly contain himself: “I knew it!” “You’ve got to keep this quiet,” warns Kyle, “The secret service doesn’t know they’re out tonight. The Senator is incognito. He loves Elton John.” The limo driver stares in awe at Kit, who at this point is braying “Yellow Brick Road” to the great dark vastness of the lake. “I can see that,” the driver respectfully agrees.

Elton John is playing at the state fairgrounds outside Dallas, which are Texas-sized. The driver takes a wrong turn and drives them to a remote part of the fairgrounds. The most direct road leading back to the stadium has been blocked off for purposes of EJ traffic control. The driver rolls down the window separating the front and back seats. “I’m sorry, Senator, but it’s going to take us a half-hour or more to get back over to the concert. We’ve got to take the long way round.” Kyle leans forward with a superior air. “You see those state troopers by the barricades over there? You just tell them you’ve got Senator Quayle and the Russian Ambassador”—by that time Jimbo had been promoted to Ambassador—“and ask them to step aside.” The driver is reluctant, but gets out of the car and walks over to the barricade. For five minutes, they watch him talking to the state troopers. The state troopers go get a superior. The superior speaks with the driver. The superior disappears and comes back with another superior. The two superiors consult for an eternity, then turn, walk over to the limo in slow motion, and tap lightly on the window. “Senator Quayle? We’ll get you right over to that concert, sir.” The barricades move aside, and my uncles get a motorcycle escort to the concert gates. The state troopers gamely agree not to breathe a word to the secret service, scouts’ honor.

On their way out of the concert, drunker than ever, my uncles discover the limo waiting for them right outside the stadium doors, surrounded by state troopers. They climb back into the limo, dimly aware that drunk luck can only last so long. The troopers fire up their motorcycles and prepare to escort the VIPs all the way back to their hotel. On the way out of the crowded concert parking lot, Kit gets cocky, pops out of the limo’s sunroof, and waves to the voters. “Look!” cries a woman in the crowd, “It’s Senator Quayle!”

I promise I’m really not making this up—this is straight from the uncles’ mouths.

Burn in the Hungarian Metal Hell

Garth just posted Rick's carefully transcribed list of English band names for Hungarian metal bands that played at Budapest's Sziget Festival, a week-long extravaganza that takes over a huge island in the Danube. Check it out:

http://www.garthsworld.org

Sorry but I don't know how to do links yet. Because I am lame.

By the way: The English name of the festival's metal stage, gleefully splashed across all English promotional materials? HAMMERWORLD: BURN IN THE HUNGARIAN METAL HELL!!!!

St Stephen's Revenge

Under the heading of starting your blog with a bang...

I'll skip the details of our arrival in Budapest, our apartment search, our new place, and various adventures to begin with the Hideous Revenge of St Stephen, as experienced by Rick and I and the entire drunk population of Budapest on Sunday last. (If you start hanging out with british expatriates enough, you start to think in phrases like "Sunday last" without trying to be cute. I can't decide if this is a problem with or fringe benefit of our move.)

St. Stephen's Day is the Hungarian equivalent of the Fourth of July, St. Stephen being, apparently, the Patron Saint of Hungary. Rick and I learned all about his life by watching a psychedelic hungarian cartoon on MTV (that's Magyar TV) in honor of the holiday. Apparently St. Stephen was the leader of a pack of merry bad-ass tribal warriors who looted and pillaged their way across a gigantic medieval map of central europe, clashing frequently with (potentially Turkish?) barbarians adversaries. He enjoyed wild pagan ceremonies such as feasting on graves and watching men dance in gigantic masks made out of hair. At some point he converted to Christianity; we know this because he grew a halo, and because one of Stephen's fellow bad asses killed a barbarian warrior by imapling him through the eye with a cross. (Now that's gangsta.)

The climax of the story comes when St. Stephen, out hunting one day, has a vision of a giant golden stag. The stag's horns turn into candles, and then the face of the stag transforms into Jesus. The horns turn into wings, and when the stag speaks, the words (all gibberish to us) stream out of its mouth like climbing flower tendrils, which blossom and drift gently back to earth. St. Stephen decides to try to shoot the stag (!) and chases after it. The stag becomes a constellation, and St. Stephen and his buddies, chasing after it, also float up into the night sky, and their bodies become constellations too. For about three minutes they chases Antler-Candelabra-Jesus over hill and dale, across a huge river where they have to jump from ice floe to ice floe, until finally the stag turns into a sun-cross on top of a hill. This hill becomes (we think) the future site of the city of Buda. After the cartoon, Rick remembered that the Grateful Dead had written a song about St. Stephen, and I realized that this legend must be the source of the Jaegermeister logo.

At any rate, here's what happens on St. Stephen's day:
1. Catholics parade through the city with the withered hand of St. Stephen
2. There is an olden-timey air race with quaint daredevil airplanes, sponsoroed by Red Bull

3. Fireworks!

It was a beautiful day:




As night fell, the entire population of the city walked down to the Danube to get a good view of the fireworks. We found a grassy seat with Ben and Elizabeth and a bunch of Swedish tourists, and prepared to watch the show. But about two minutes before the fireworks were slated to begin, we saw lighting over the Buda hills, and felt a cold breeze rushing towards us. About a minute into the fireworks, the wind started blowing water up the embankment into the streets. A few seconds later, the hardest, most driving rain I've ever felt. The entire crowd ran as fast as it could for shelter. The fireworks didn't stop (Rick tells me they'll go off even in water); they sounded like bombs. The wind blew the sparks through the streets. Branches flew off trees, cafe chairs hurdled through the air, Rick was hit in the head by a flying beer can. Within thirty seconds we were completely soaked, and the rain just didn't stop. "WHERE'S MY HAND???" Rick intoned.

It took about a half-hour to get home through streets flooded with water and people--everyone completely soaked, and disoriented, and trying to get home. Nice little tourist girls taking shelter in strip clubs, and families trying to stay together, and every intersection underpass packed to the gills with people. A disaster movie. We drank green tea and watched folkloric dancing and baton twirlers on TV, with breaks for trying to decipher St Stephen documentaries.

testing

testing