The Return of the Hippie

I've been off the radar for a while, but now I finally made time to write a post.

About 2 weeks ago, a usual Friday night consisting of an awesome BBQ with my awesome friends, an old hippie suddenly emerged. After chasing powder snow in Canada and Who-knows-where Hippie had gathered his wits and returned to Cali. This is the story about our adventures.

Floatopia

For weeks there had been rumors about an epic event called Floatopia. It's a mix of alcohol, Pacific and home build rafts. About 10 000 people or so partying on the beach. It was scheduled for the Saturday after Hippie's arrival, but the police had effectively shut down every beach access to prevent the event. Instead it turned into a carneval on Del Playa, girls in bikinis, boats on wheels and water pistols blasting. Oh, yeah!

Solvang

In the valleys nearby there is a Danish town, with fake korsvirkeshus and a lot of pastries. The only thing genuine is the hunger for profit, the rest is a red and white fasade. But the pastries were good.

Jay Leno

A few weeks ago I applied for tickets to The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. It's a talk show on NBC that is recorded in Burbank. It was all Hippie's idea and it was a surprisingly good dito. Jay Leno was amusing, the guests were B- and C-actors and some country singer, but hey, it was free and fun. You can watch the episode until April 30 here.

Coachella

In the desert east of LA there is a giant music festival named Coachella during one weekend in April. It's a Mecca for sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll - and more drugs. The temperature was unbearable before 2 pm but the mild evenings were perfect for concerts. We borrowed tents from the Excursion Club. I got the most depressed tent ever. It was all scew, only the inner tent was left and the door zipper was broken. No privacy worth mentioning.

Some of the bands were cool, Jay-Z had a pretty good show with a visit from his (more famous) wife, Beyonce. The scene was build from big blocks where they projected ligths, e g in his New York song they looked like sky scrapers. The Gorillaz had a big movie screen and showed cartoons, the music was dark and the movies violent and morbid. How strange that I didn't get a hot fussy feeling from watching an anime girl being burned inside a flying windmill. Hippie was on fire during the Devo concert. He had seen them during the Olympics in Whistler and hence owned a blue Devo hat that attracted attention from other festival guests. Strolling around with a ziggurat hat wasn't very spectacular tho, not compared to some of the advanced hair and make up creations we saw. I was so jealous of the glittering fethered mohawks and fairy wings.

Grand Canyon

McConaughey came to visit from Vancouver and Hippie, Turtle and I picked him up at the airport and packed into the VW van and went on a road trip to Grand Canyon. On the way we stopped in the Mojave desert and climbed rocks. Arms and legs were scratched and sore afterwards. There's a reason why Grand Canyon is so famous, it is stunningly beautiful. It was formed during a couple of million years, first a tactonic

plate lifted up the sea shore and then the Colorado river and heavy rain carved the canyon.

The van had a bad cough and sometimes needed physical motivation to get started, and who doesn't love the smell of leaking gasoline in the morning. Miraculously it didn't shake into pieces on the 15 h drive there. A tip: always bring duck tape, in case something breaks, or someone (we don't have to point fingers at Canucks, do we?) gets word diarrhea.

There were beautiful campgrounds and, as always, paying was considered optional. McConaughey took the surviving in the wilderness very seriously and carried big jars of salt and peanut butter on our 4-hour hike. We found the perfect rock and sat on the rim watching the sun set over the landscape, the shadows growing pink and purple.

Easter

On Easter eve, Turtle and I made an Easter dinner and painted eggs with my housemates and Bomber. My egg is a påskkärring/ drag queen.

El Dorado

When I asked Raven if she would celebrate Easter, she looked perplexed: "No, do you? Are you religious?" Religious, me? HAHAHAHA. Apparently, the holiest week of the year is more celebrated in the world's most secular country. It has to do with Sweden's homogeneous population of Lutherans. Usually Pesach, Catholic and Lutheran Easter aren't the same week, so it's natural that there isn't any "Easter break" here.

Instead I enjoyed me first week of classes. I got back from Florida Tuesday morning and had to crash courses. Crashing is stressful because I'll loose my visa status if I'm not enrolled in 12 units by next week. Now I've settled for history: western civilization after 1750, robot mechanics and adv numerical analysis. I only have classes three days a week, actually I discarded all courses with Monday or Friday lectures. I especially like my history class. Ironically, it's taught by a Japanese professor. The first lecture he quoted Rudy Giuliani: "There has been no domestic terror attacks under Bush". Note that Mr Giuliani was mayor in New York City Jan 1 1994- Dec 31 2001. My homework for this week is to read Candide. It's one of the funniest books I've ever read, Voltaire is hilarious.

The first weeks of the quarter are always relaxed. Welcome-back bbqs, free movie screenings and lots of parties. One of my housemates, Sho turned 21 this week, which resulted in the usual multiday celebrations. But my liver has not yet recovered from the spring break madness, so I stay kinda sober (it might have to do with increased alcohol tolerance too after Florida :-/). The weather is lovely, people are friendly, classes are great. Life is good in the best of worlds.

East of Eden

Eddie: "Buuurp."
Me: "You don't have to signal all the details of your digestive system."
Pokerface: "If you're going on vacation with guys, we gonna treat you like a guy."

Eddie: "Actually we're restraining ourselves. With only guys it would be much worse."

Pokerface: "All that coffee earlier gives me an ..."

Me: "No, please, don't say it..."

Pokerface:"...acid reflux."

Oh. My. God. Acid reflux was the mantra of Pokerface and Eddie the first days. Their sensitive stomachs cannot handle nicotine, caffeine, tap water or beer. Or beans. Damn Cuban restaurant! They could have fueled a bio gas vehicle.

Most of the spring break is NC-17, but here is the censured version...

From the deserts in the southwest to the swamps in the southeast. The Sunshine state. Oranges. Alligators. And Dunkin Donuts in every corner.

The first few days we stayed in Daytona Beach. Daytona was popular among springbreakers in the 90's, but now it's declined, populated by white trash and low life. But it was spring break, and the alcohol was cheap so we partied as if the world would end.

We rented a car and drove to Key West. Key West is the southernmost point of US (except for Hawii, Turtle later pointed out). Hemmingway lived there for a while. It was incredible beautiful. Like the Caribbean, but rich. It's OK to drink in the street. So we did. The first night we went to a bar where they had a sexy bull riding contest. Women in all ages and shapes climbed onto the bull showing their natural and artificial bodies to the cheering redneck crowd. I've never seen so many fake boobs in one place before (until two days later in Miami beach).

We rented scooters and drove around the peninsula, buying fresh coconuts from the back of a truck, stopping at nice beaches. I had my new fashionable bathing suit which resulted in the weirdest tan ever.

The second night in Key West we went to a bar with ladies nights, which means free drinks for the ladies. I ordered beers and drinks and gave them to the guys, everyone got pretty smashed, I don't know... somehow we ended up in a strip club. Let's fast forward from there.

Miami is awesome. But expensive. We found a heavenly Cuban restaurant in Miami beach and ate us into food coma. Then we went dancing to Latin tunes. There was a huge outdoors electro music festival and neon colored ravers swarmed everywhere. We hung out on Miami beach though, people watching and drinking mojitos. I did spotted an inline skater in bikini, but the guys missed her. There were plenty of creeps there too. I went to the restroom, walking alone just for a while, fully dressed and with my usual "Fuck off" written in the forehead, and still attracted some unwanted attention. The most disturbing one was a fat middle aged guy, who after some friendly questions about whether I was in Miami for the music festival, suddenly asked how my money situation was. "Very good!" I proclaimed and hurried away. C'mon, models are hanging out on this beach, stop bothering me.

When we landed at LAX we all agreed upon two things. 1) It would be so nice to get rid of each other and 2) California is the best.