preview.

i'm back from the united kingdom. three of the coolest days of my life. more to come, as soon as i get time to write. hopefully soon, but i've got loads of homework coming up before next week (my finals week). we'll see how soon i get posts up.

-jon

ELEVEN!

yesterday evening, i had dinner with luna and paula, our two spanish group organizers, and sean and tyler, two of the guys from our uni group. we were eating dinner and luna's place and i asked the girls about sesame street, if they watched it when they were young. in spain it's called barrio sesamo. we started talking about it, and i learned the names of characters, like grover in spain is called coco, and they knew the skit where he teaches kids about near and far. how cool is that? they had some of the same skits here in spain, and probably in all the other countries that showed sesame street, as they did in america. other characters, kermit the frog = la rana gustavo, cookie monster = triqui, ernie and bert = epi y blas, grover = coco (and obviously, supergrover = supercoco) and, ready? guy smiley = pepe sonrisas. i almost wish i had grown up watching the spanish version. so anyway, we're talking about different characters and skits, and out of nowhere paula starts singing, "uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, siete, ocho, nueve, diez, once, doce". yes. they both knew the pinball skit. the skit where a pinball bounces around the coolest pinball machine you could ever imagination whilst a song plays in the background, singing the numbers one through twelve. the melody during the 1-12 is one of the most indelible memories i have from my childhood. and outside of my family, i've met a total of like three people who know about the pinball sketch, so it was great to meet someone from a different country who knew that from their childhood too.

i gotta say though, hearing the girls sing it, and after seeing the video you're about to see, the spanish one through twelve has so much less rhythm than the english one through twelve. i don't want to sound arrogant, but it just sounds so much better/cooler in english than in spanish. but here is the spanish version anyway. it's not the best quality, just ignore the names of the numbers that pop up, those are obnoxious and weren't in the skit originally. just focus on the song.



ok now check this out. the real thing.



one of my all time favorite sesame street sketches. it was just cool to find out they had it in another country too. that's all.

-jon

united kingdom.

i'm nervous. in three days i leave on a bus and then plane to fly to the united kingdom. my friend sean and i are arriving first in london on thursday night, staying there all day friday and then on saturday, mid-afternoon, we take another plane to dublin and stay there until early monday morning.

i'm more excited about this trip than i think i have been about any trip i've taken yet this semester. so why am i nervous? i'm not sure. maybe because i have a strong feeling i'm going to arrive in london, spend a day falling in love with the city, and then have to leave. i've never been obsessed with english culture, but england, and especially london, has such a special history in terms of society and culture, music, films, books, religion, etc. it's an extremely important place in our world and i'm way excited to see it. but in a day and a half? i don't think so. i'm gonna see about 1% of what i want to see and then i'm gonna have to go. bum deal. but it'll be great. we're meeting two good girl friends of sean's from uni who are studying at the university of hull for the semester and hang out with them for our time in london. it's cool too, the girls have been to london a few times so they have a feel for the city and know their way around better than we do, obviously. we don't really know yet what we're gonna do, but one thing for sure we have planned, a musical. YES. when i searched online what musicals were playing, a long list of the greatest musicals ever came up. phantom of the opera. wizard of oz. les mis. wicked. grease. hairspray. the lion king. loads more. immediately the first one that grabbed my attention was les mis, but the girls have already seen it so we're gonna see wicked instead. wicked in london. so awesome.

other london things i want to see. maybe the royal palace? not a huge deal to me, if we make it there that'd be cool, but i'm not dying to see it. i would really like to see the actual london, more than just the tourist trap. i'm gonna try to have us stay away from places like picadilly circus if we can. i've read it's clogged with nothing but tourists and the like, which does not sound good. i'd love to go find an area like camden market and go shopping in some authentic london stores, clothes, records, whatever. also, although i'm not a huge beatles fan, just for the history and sake of it, i'd love to see abbey road and the music studios right there. we'll see what the girls and sean are up for. but i'm way excited.

saturday afternoon sean and i take a plane to dublin. i'm not as excited for this as london, but this is still gonna be incredible. i think because i'm not 100% irish, i don't have a serious jones to visit it. it seems to me like almost more than any other ancestry or heritage, irish people always want to go see their motherland. maybe not but that's just what i've noticed. so sean is extremely psyched about this and i'm about 75% as excited as he is. i am glad we're agreed on what we want to do while we're there. neither of us know much about dublin, so we are gonna have a guiness at the world famous guiness storehouse, maybe visit Christchurch cathedral, and then after that, we both just want to hit the countryside. we want to see the green that ireland is famous for. so for one day we're gonna get out of the city and see as much of the country as we can. it's ambitious but i'm really excited about it. and we only have a hostel there for one night, saturday night, so early sunday morning we can check out of the hostel, head to the guiness storehouse, have our beer, then head off to the countryside with our backpacks and explore as much as we possibly can. how exciting. it will be awesome. and then early monday morning we catch a plane back to spain just in time to miss almost all our classes. awesome.

like most of the trips i've taken here, i think it'll be just long enough to whet my appetite and make me want to come back one day. oh well. it'll be fun though, a long weekend with american friends in an english speaking country. sort of like a reinitiation into english speaking culture before i actually arrive back in the states. fish and chips, here i come.

-jon

one long paragraph.

one month left.

walking home tonight from spending some time with a few friends, i found something i think i might miss. i crossed the main street to get to my house and i hopped up on the sidewalk and kept on walking like normal. as i glanced down at my feet i noticed how the sidewalk is designed. it's made up of squares of stoney grey, all with diagonal lines cut into them. every now and again there is a little cluster of squares that are a maroonish color, but less ugly than maroon. i don't know why it struck me tonight. i guess just thinking about how many times i've walked the sidewalks here and how i look down at my feet or at the ground just ahead of me as i walk and how i've become so accustomed to this life, this city, these roads. my normal routine is to come home from class and flip on some music and hope i can get internet in my room. i haven't seen colleen in four months. she used to be part of my routine, seeing my friend joel used to be my routine, double decker tacos and mega buddies from kwik star used to be my routine, playing my beautiful stratocaster used to be my routine. and none of that is it anymore. my routine here consists of listening to music, putting off what little homework we're given, writing, watching tv shows i have, spending evenings at the cafe, spending evenings playing ping pong. i don't know why sidewalk tiles set all this off in my head. it's just so weird to think how my life has changed, just out of necessity. it obviously couldn't have stayed the same because i lost everything that was normal to me before. and i've carved out a new routine for myself. it's not my absolute favorite but it has sufficed. i've learned many, many things about who i am, personality and character wise, things that i want to take advantage of back in the states, things i want to change, things i want to work harder at, things i want to spend more time on. being isolated from community has forced me to examine who i am and what i want to do. as much as this trip has brought me a lot of loneliness at times, it's also brought me a new kind of clarity about my identity. and i don't want to lose that. i think what the sidewalk tiles made me realize is that i'm proud of myself for managing to carve out a new kind of life for five months in a completely new place. some of the kids here wouldn't say that i've taken advantage of my time here in spain as much as i should've, not going out enough, or meeting new people from new places, or whatever, but this trip has gone from being about speaking another language (i learned within the first week that i wasn't going to leave the country fluent) to being about learning about me. and i've had more success in that aspect than i could've hoped for. i'm learning what's important to me, what's not, what i want to work for and fight for and live for when i return to normalcy. and i'm excited to get back to that normalcy with this new kind of confidence. there really is a strange kind of confidence that comes from seeing new and beautiful things. for me it's not always the thing itself that brings me confidence; the confidence comes from the thoughts and realizations that are triggered by seeing new things. i'm returning to the states more confident about my life and who i am because i recognize supermarket signs in spanish. because of the gorgeous cathedral in the middle of the city. because of the concrete ping pong tables outside in the city park. because of the thousands of new faces i've seen here. because of the sunset i saw in san sebastian and the mountains i've seen in the picos de europa. because of the sidewalk tiles. it's odd how the tiniest little things like that set off such a chain reaction of introspection in me. i guess i finally feel really ready to return to something i know. ready to play my strat. ready to study my butt off this summer. ready for fountain pop. i can't wait.

-jon

cloverfield.

one bad thing about studying abroad is missing all the great american stuff that gets released while you're gone. so far, i've missed the release of albums like gnarls the odd couple and movies like rambo. ok rambo's a joke, but i'm missing the latest episodes of lost, 30 rock (a new fav.), and the office. and in may, there are loads of movies coming out that i would love to see: iron man, speed racer, prince caspian, and indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull. i definitely want to see at least all of these in the theaters because they're epic adventure movies. you can't see these on a laptop or a crappy tv set. you gotta watch them in style, with killer sound and a gigantic screen in your face.

this is the way i wish i had've seen cloverfield. i watched it last night on my laptop, and although i was still blown away, i can only imagine how intense it must've been in the theaters. if you haven't seen it, i think it's out on dvd now so i definitely recommend it. it was incredible; a super sweet monster movie. if you don't know anything about it, the whole thing is shot from the perspective of a handheld camera, captured by a guy who was originally supposed to document a going-away party held for a friend. it starts at this party, and then everyone hears a huge explosion, a monster comes storming through the city, and all hell breaks loose after that. basically the whole movie is this group of a few friends running and screaming. and oh man is it scary. never once is the illusion broken that all these events are happening while you are watching; everything seems so incredibly real. the camera is jerked around, it points towards the ground at times, it always seems shaky; it's an incredibly visceral experience. i was dreading what was coming next the whole time because there is such a feeling of outright panic and confusion throughout the whole movie. i was as in the dark as the people running from the monster, i was struggling to keep up with what was going on, just like everyone else in the movie. usually not knowing what's going on is obnoxious in a film, but here it just makes you feel like you're so much more involved. you get a little frustrated when the camera doesn't show you things you want, but so is everybody else because they have no idea what's going on either or if they will be ok or anything. so awesome.

the makers of this movie (i love you j.j. abrams) know exactly how much to give the audience to keep them hooked. there is only one real money shot of the monster, and it is crazy. up until then all you see are glimpses, and never the whole thing. visually, it just traps you and you can't look away. the actors do a great job too; there wasn't a minute where i wasn't involved with them. hud, the cameraman, at times is a bit too dumb, but as far as reviews that said the characters weren't developed or were all 1-dimensional? of course they aren't developed, and it doesn't take away from the film at all. it's a monster movie in real time, of course the characters are trying to survive by getting away from this unseen danger, not grow in their relationships with one another.

it's also a cool commentary on our culture, that a person would actually attempt to keep a camera rolling the whole time this disaster is occurring. when the head of the statue of liberty comes crashing through a street and lands in front of everyone, you can actually see people taking out their camera phones and taking pictures of it. our culture is so obsessed with capturing moments and the movie nails that really well. very cool.

there has been some talk of a sequel, which, if done in an uncheesy way, could be potentially awesome. they've talked about making another movie from the point of view of another camera, another group of people. that would be great, as long as totally new narratives are given concerning the monster. maybe it could go on longer than the first one did; follow-up the story a bit. i don't know. whatever they do, it's gonna have to be killer to top this one. watch it.

-jon

don't be offended if i ever talk to you with my earbuds in. i'm probably paying attention.

had an interesting chat with a friend on the bus tonight. we'd spent the day in león with some friends and most people were falling asleep on the bus and we got to chatting about the day and how it went. and i realized a few things.

it's weird living here in spain. and it's especially weird because the closest friends i have are people with whom i'm not really in my comfort zone. they aren't people i think i would ever choose to be close to. they're not bad people, just way different than i am. and i think lately i've been subconsciously distancing myself from hanging out with people cause i'm starting to realize that. i think i'm known around here as the kid with the ipod; at school, between classes, even if i'm talking to somebody, i have at least one earbud in, and most times two. i walk to class with my ipod, i play ping pong with my ipod. blake even drew a comic that was seen by all the students with me in it, and he drew me wearing an argyle sweater and listening to my ipod so people would better recognize me. it's just part of my identity. i think i'm also known as the guy who doesn't go out. there are so many days when people ask me when i did during the weekend or if i'm going out later that night, and my most common answer is "nope, probably gonna head to the cafe". the cafe has become my second spanish home. i'm almost always guaranteed good, functional internet until midnight when they close. and they have pretty good coffee.

but that's who i've become to the kids around here. the kid with the ipod who doesn't go out. and when i realized i was really starting to isolate myself and every now and then would get crap from people about it (oh lame jon isn't going out cause he's got a skype date, etc.), i felt kind of bad about it at first. but i think i've finally pinpointed why i do it. i just don't connect with these kids well. i have a different lifestyle, a different mindset about things than most people here do and it is so hard to truly connect with anybody. i connect best with people through music, through lists, through creativity. and no one here understands that. no one here would rather spend time in a cafe, researching artists and albums online so they can write a Top 5 list about music rather than go out and party. and i would. i'd rather spend time seeing colleen's face and getting to talk to her and connect with her rather than go out. nothing makes me happier than letting her know who i've been reading about or sending her new music that i've been listening to. i'd even rather spend time talking with my other buddy online (yeah, like instant messenger. i still rock that.) than going out because that's how we connect. he and i have hung out in real life less than ten times (girlfriend's cousin) but i feel like he's a close friend cause our minds work in a similar way. he gets excited about music, about creativity, like i do. and no one here does.

today in león, around 7pm, we'd been there since like 2 or so, and people had just bought some drinks and we were gonna walk around the city some more. there were nine of us altogether, and people were eating their snacks and drinking their drinks, and i actually put my ipod on, even with everyone around talking. it's not that i don't want to talk to anybody, it's just that there are times when i'm just dying to experience a tune and i'll forfeit being 100% involved in a conversation for that experience ("rock with you" by michael jackson was what i needed to listen to.) i ended having my ipod on for almost the next three hours, walking with everyone and dancing while we walked. sometimes i'd talk to people, sometimes i'd fall to the back and practice moonwalking or other dance moves off the curb. and it was fun.

it's a weird thing. i feel like a part of my mind has opened up here in spain and i'm nervous about losing that when i go back to the states. i've had the best opportunity to just let music sink into every part of my life here, and been able to have an outlet for it through writing. when i'm in the states, i've got real classes, real homework, a job, a relationship, and actual close friends that i have to put effort into. here, i've got easy classes, joke homework, no job, still a relationship, and one actual close friend. so i have so much time to let this part of my mind open up and let the creativity blossom. and i've loved it. it'll probably be one of the biggest things i remember about this trip. it's just an important part of who i am and i haven't really found it here with anyone else. like when somebody asks me what i'm listening to (which by the way hardly ever happens. why don't more people ask that to people with headphones in their ears?), if i get even remotely passionate about what it is i'm listening to, i almost always get blank responses back, or at least apathetic responses. which just kind of bums me out. not even for me, but like if a person responds in an uncaring type of way, it's like what inspires you? what makes you feel things, get passionate about things? i just wish i was surrounded by more people who cared about things that seem important to me.

that's the biggest reason i'm excited to get back into the states. not to get back into my comfort zone because it's easier, but to get back to that place because it's necessary for me. i need to connect to people who really know me cause i'm starting to really drag without those connections. so if nothing else, i've got about one more month of good blogs in me and then they'll start to suck again. enjoy while you've got 'em.

-jon

summer jams.

does anybody need another reason to be amped for this summer? i've got one:




God has now officially smiled on this summer and given it a thumbs up. here's some more info.

"The special, expanded John Mayer live-in-concert DVD/CD "Where The Light Is" will arrive July 1. The new "live" package will be available as a 2-CD set, a DVD (regular and Blu-Ray HD), a CD/DVD combo and a multi-disc vinyl set with an enclosed download card." - tryjm.com

how exciting is that? a new dvd/cd combo. this concert was held last december, and the killer thing is that it was part john mayer solo/acoustic, part john mayer trio (reuniting for the first time in like a year and a half), and part john mayer with his current band. absolutely a 5-star show. i've got the audience recording of it, and it's phenomal, so it will be extra great to get the actual soundboard show. SO GREAT. come quick summer. i'm waiting.

-jon