confessions of a football player

he plays football, american football for university of utah. he is huge. he drives obnoxiously, unnecessarily huge truck. i see girls stare at random parts of his body as he walks into the diner, which he does pretty frequently. most of the time he sits at the counter. most of the time he is alone, other times he is in a group with similar type of dudes. when he sits at the counter, he likes to talk to me and i guess i don't mind talking to him. yesterday it went like this:
- do you like sports?
- yeah sometimes.
- what kind is your favorite?
- i don't like football, i am sorry... when i was little my granpa watched a lot of soccer so i like soccer because it makes me think of him and home in general, i like basketball games too, they are fun to watch and baseball is cool because you can just have hot dogs and beer and watch the sunset.
- (with total excitement) i love soccer!
- really? soccer?
- yeah, i think soccer is so much more fun than football. i can't really usually tell anyone this but i think soccer is awesome. i think its my favorite sport. i don't really like the football fans and cheerleaders and all that shit.
- i agree, soccer is so much better. its kind of funny that you like soccer, don't you think? so, why do you play football?
- i guess i am built for it. have you been watching the euro games going on? Spain was winning...
- yeah, little. here, i think your eggs and toast are up...

later that evening i went to a soccer game with tinisha. it was super fun. as i watched the game, i thought of my grandpa vano yelling 'goooooool' and eating a lot of watermelon and i thought about the regular at the diner and about how much more complex people are than the stereotypes that we form would have us believe...

a farm? a farm. a farm!

there is a millionaire that lives up above park city and he has a farm. it is not an ordinary type of farm, it is a car and motorcycle farm. it is called ' a farm' i suppose to just be cute. he owns literally hundreds of cars and bikes from the 20s and 30s, sitting there among the beautiful uinta mountains. some of the machines are literally like pieces of art, the colors are of different era, but surprisingly resembling the future. as we rode our motorcycles through the property, it felt surreal, like a movie set. i found this rooster in the abandoned kitchen in one of the barns.

all hikes should end at a bar

while at torrey, three of us decided to go on a long hike. it was a hike i remember doing with dags and john years ago. both sofe and coley tried to convince me to go on a shorter one, put i was persistent. i remember the narrow red rock that surrounded the most of the walk, the waterfalls, walking in the water on the shiny, poky rocks...

the first 5 hours of the hike we were doing fine, we had enough water, none of us were too tiered yet. in fact we found a skeleton of an elk. the whole thing was still there, it was pretty cool. we saw cougar prints and beautiful flowers. as another hour or so passed and we couldn't see the end of the hike (visitor center), we began to panic a little. it was mostly sofe. she made us get off the hiking trail and we started to head up toward the top of the mountain, very tall mountain, so we could see over and see a road perhaps... after another long hour or so, we found a road that was a dirt road but there were some car tracks on it. as we followed the road in the direction that seemed to make most sense at the moment, but for no particular reason, we walked and walked and walked and ended up at the entrance... to the patio, the only local bar in torrey. not only we didn't anticipate that at all, we thought we were hiking totally different direction. when we walked into the bar, we must have looked pretty bad, because when we asked the bartender if someone could give us a ride to our car, which was back in the park, he said, absolutely no problem but sit and have some water and beer first. which we did. we had one and two and three, happily. we stayed long enough to make friends, i think there was tim who likes to play music, lorain who collects rocks and rollerblades, mr.x who wore his shirt open really low and kept asking us if needed a ride, kile from loa who was really proud of it and said small towns in utah are like mafia families, it is all about which family one comes from, and there was doug who i knew from long ago and who bought us many beers.

although lost for a while, this hike had the best outcome and the best destination ever.

some heels for camping?

i love outdoors and i love new york city. i love the trash, sirens and dust of the busy streets and i love the serenity, eerie quietness and calmness of remote spots. i love pure beauty of both of them. i feel lucky that i have lived in utah and have had this amazing opportunity to experience the desert, red rock and surreal beauty of lake of salt. there is a chance i would never know this place if it was not for the randomness of me coming to utah and still living here now.

in fact one of my favorite places in the whole wide world is a little town called torrey. torrey is in southern utah, right at the entrance to capital reef. there is something about this place that connects to me in such a deep and at the same casual way, as though we have known each other for a long, long time, known each other well, if you can know a town that way.

johnny and i go to torrey often. this time i went to torrey with some of my favorite girls: sofe and colley.

our adventure started at... target. sofe forgot her swimming suit so why not do some shopping? i am not sure what town we were in, but we saw a polygomist family in the parking lot. i have such an interest in that whole culture, subculture i guess. but that's another story.

eclectic, accumulating, post-modern and sad

i got woken up by my hone buzzing at 7:00 am, never a good sign. the cook from the diner said there was no opener at the diner. the first server was late, super late. tomas said he can give customers coffee and maybe they'll wait? from that moment on, the day at the diner was truly exhausting, like it in the way that only happens once in while. even the best employees seemed to have gotten up on a wrong foot. by the end of the day and many breakfasts and lunches served, i needed a drink.

the wedding in the afternoon. john is in canada, but i didn't want to miss it. it was elise and travis. and unlike many other people, i actually find weddings kind of interesting. i had two dates. one of my dates scotty LOVES weddings and funerals, as soon as he heard i was going to one, he asked if he could join. my second date was duncan. duncan's dad Utah Phillips, amazing, very respectable, beautiful american folk singer, had just passed away a week ago. i know it has been a crazy time for duncan and we haven't talked since he came back from california, his father's funeral. so much of duncan's life seemed to evolve around going on the road with his dead, help with benefit shows, etc. i figured the wedding might cheer him up and it might be a light place for us to catch up.

before we left for the wedding, we set at my house and drank whiskey. duncan brought me three books from his father's private library. they were about writing systems and one on prague. it was really sweat of duncan. this morning dagny left for virginia, it is strange not to have her at home. it was so nice to hang out with the boys that we showed up at the wedding as the bride was about to enter the back yard, we were right behind her. farley was taking random shots of random people doing the social wedding things, like eating cake, having drinks, laughing and playing with someone else's kids. duncan was in a dark mood. he talked about the funeral, hundreds of people that showed up at the funeral. utah phillips was history, his music, what he stood for and the type of affect he had on his family. he definitely had a strong impact on duncan, this evening it was all coming to surface. scott walked around the wedding consuming drinks and food and saying some of the most bizarre comments i had ever heard.

progressively we got more and more drunk. everyone kept asking where john was, i explained over and over again. salt lake is so small, so protective... we decided to get away and went to .... strip clubs. night continued to get weirder, but super fun. first club was foxy and fancy, the second one was simple and working class with florescent lights. duncan felt comfortable here. scotty felt comfortable in the first one. i felt comfortable... in both.

night ended with duncan having to leave abruptly because he was having a difficult time, scotty and i staying very calm and enjoying ourselves. later we met up with lisa, scotty's girlfriend, who had a really bad day at work. it reminded me about my crazy morning at the diner. lisa said she was ready to give up on her business, beehive tea room. i would probably feel the same, if there was no john and i was doing it alone.

the worst thing that happened today and the most important one is that bob from the diner passed away today. in the middle of the business, we got a strange phone call with the information. really? bob who was so looking forward to going back to alaska, who set at the counter every single day, drank coffee and talked to every single one of us. bob was probably the most simple, nice and polite man that i had ever known. i have no idea how to deal with his death. in fact i have no idea how to deal with anyone's death. it is THE most difficult and confusing topic for me.

i wish i could have gone to tbilisi to see my grandmother before she died. goodbye bob.

jean-luc godard

i interviewed richard brody from the new yorker magazine, who just finished a biography of jean luc godard. most of the time i was just jealous that he had met a person who made a film that i feel like has changed my life, 'breathless'. i know that sound totally cheesy but it is the truth.

although a simple procedure, i am having super hard time creating a link, here is an address you can paste if you want to hear the interview.
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/krcl/local-krcl-715342.mp3