Killing Batteries

If you missed it, you can check this page for the rerun schedule, but I’ll save you the suspense and tell you that Anthony’s trip to Romania was pitifully conceived, planned and executed. Among other things, totally avoidable eff-ups included:

• Rather than contacting me, he let his bumbling Russian buddy, who’d seemingly visited Romania once for a week in the 90s, plan the whole trip for him, including going to one of the schlockiest restaurants in the country and spending the night at a Dracula-themed hotel in Braşov on Halloween with a tour group from Nevada.
• Spending more than 30 cumulative minutes in that hellhole Bucharest.
• Believing that a professional advance team could iron out any pesky Romanian bureaucratic impasses before he got there and if there was trouble all he’d have to do is present his trusty folder of official papers and everything would be just fine.
• Thinking that driving a Dacia 1310 long distances would be funny, good TV instead of life threatening.
• Not getting a sexy translator.

On that note, I’d like to formally announce that I have signed contracts with LP to go back to Romania and Moldova to research and update chapters for the same for the next Eastern Europe and Europe on a Shoestring guidebooks.

Some of my heartiest, long-standing blog readers will either be groaning sadly and/or getting very excited for all the pathetic, whiny, bleating, bitchy Romania and Moldova-related blog posts that are sure to follow which have historically been some of the funniest material I have ever written. Well, the joke is on you, jackholes. This is going to be the greatest trip ever and here’s why:

• I’ll be traveling in summer, not the dead of winter.
• I’ll be driving a real car, as opposed to this piece of $hit.
• I’ll be constantly mobbed by crazed fans, carrying the previous additions of the guidebooks, co-written by me, directed by me and starring me.
• I’ve been to all of these destinations before, several times in some cases, and won’t have to deal with things like getting lost while driving, getting lost while walking and getting lost while getting lost.
• I’ll have a sexy translator in tow.

On that note I’d like to formally announce that I’m taking applications for the position of my sexy translator. Ideal applicants will have the following qualifications:

• Speak English
• Speak Romanian
• Be not batshit crazy
• Be sexy

Though my Romanian language skills haven’t deserted me as fast as my Italian language skills, it wouldn’t hurt to have a second pair of ears while I’m interrogating bus station clerks or to have a flirty co-pilot to smooth things over when I get stopped by the pigs for imaginary driving infractions and shaken down for a bribe. I’m looking at you Moldova.

I blast off for the first of two Romania/Moldova trips on May 7th. Bucharest beware, I’m coming to see you first and I’m not happy about it.

I apologize in advance for the length, but not really. I vblog like I write – it’s either 2,000 words or nothing at all.

[Cross-posted at This is Why I Love Minneapolis]

Both LP people and sick voyeuristic bystanders have been asking when I’m going to write up a review of the author workshop I attended in rainy San Francisco two weeks ago. When vivid descriptions of impending physical deformities started arriving from the editor pool in Melbourne, I decided I’d better slap something together. Don’t mess with the Aussies.

Before I start with the sarcasm and the hilarious, libelous, semi-fabricated rumors for the sake of your entertainment, I have to honestly report that I love these workshops. Who wouldn’t? LP flies all of us in at their expense, puts us up in a hotel, feeds and waters us, all for the pleasure of productive information exchange and a strengthened sense of community. LP is still the only guidebook publisher that brings together its authors en masse like this. Keep in mind that we’re all a bunch of freelancers, working contract to contract - there are no payrolled authors at LP. Some authors work for LP year round, others [cough] only once a year, as expressly ordered by our federally-assigned team of therapists. There’s no guarantee that any of the authors they flew in and showered with swag and wine will ever work for them again, yet there we were, bonding, sharing, arguing, laughing, flirting and boinking.

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It’s been a while since I compiled a lengthy list of my opinions and pet peeves and given them an authoritative title so as to pass them off as travel gospel that panicky newspaper researchers can quote in last second filler stories. (Goddamn I love the internet!)

Plus, I just flew from Minneapolis to San Francisco and I’m always on edge for days after I fly through US airports, so I’d like to do a little healthy venting here instead of demolishing a pay phone with my bare hands. After all, changing the world for the better isn’t going to happen by itself, so here’s my contribution:

• Just because you have eight hours before your flight leaves, doesn’t mean that I have eight hours before my flight leaves so get the f*ck out of my way. And I’m truly sorry if age/disability has resulted in you not being able to walk very fast, but I’m not sorry enough about it to miss my plane, so please move to the right.

• The ’stand’ and ‘walk’ lanes painted onto the moving walkways weren’t put there for yucks. For those of you who never caught on to that reading fad, you’re supposed to stand in the ’stand’ lane and don’t stand in the ‘walk’ lane. I’m all for breaking the rules sometimes - except for this one.

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In the US, in order to qualify for a home mortgage loan, you need to have “four concurrent open lines of credit” for the previous two years. That means credit cards, car/student loans, another mortgage…

So, to sum up, you need to have copious existing debt in order to qualify for more debt.

Also, if you have the inexcusable impudence to have lived and spent your money abroad for four years, your credit rating comes back saying “no credit”, effectively erasing your previous sterling credit rating and rewinding you back to the financial standing you had when you were 18 years old.

I’ve been a very, very bad consumer and now I’m being duly punished. On the plus side, during those four years abroad, I learned how to curse extravagantly in multiple foreign languages, which has been super handy skill to have lately.

[See the full "What I've Learned" list here. Start at the bottom and read up.]