Ten Little Chances to be Free (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenlittlebullets) wrote2004-05-17 03:30 pm
tenlittlebullets) wrote2004-05-17 03:30 pm
(no subject)
Eeee, New York was fun. Even if no one called me and my legs are all sore from walking around. I'm quite sick of Russian class (difficult language + bad teaching = ARGH BASH HEAD AGAINST WALL), but it was worth it for the field trip, man. The teacher kept trying to make it into a cultural, educational experience for us and we just laughed and ran off and had lots of fun.
Let's see... maybe I should go through it event by event?
I have no appreciation for most art, and was therefore bored out of my skull until I found an exhibit that had some Renaissance paintings in it. There was actually a half-size 'practice' for one of the statues that adorn the Paris Opera, how cool is that? And some ancient Greek sculpture as well. Other than that, blech, boring. Most of it was modern art, and I hate modern art.
Brighton Beach, for you fellow non-New Yorkers, is a part of Brooklyn that's predominantly Russian. Sort of like a Slavic Chinatown. So we had a sort of lunch/dinner at this restaurant called Tatiana's, (and in what's fast becoming a pattern, I was kicked out of the girls' room and had to explain--in Russian--that I was not a boy) and even though I wasn't hungry and I hate restaurants I did choke down some chicken without having an allergic reaction to that suspicious sauce on the side. Afterward we were let loose in Brighton Beach with orders to go on a 'scavenger hunt' and interview immigrants and other nonsense, and proceeded to run off to Coney Island and then to get lost in Brooklyn. We did get back to the meeting place on time, and we did make our way into the heavily Russian part of Brighton Beach. There were all these book/music/video stores, and I noticed two things: one, all the foreign (mostly Russian with a little Japanese for some reason) music was dirt cheap; and two, whoever stocks the record stores has good taste. Lots of Rammstein =D I even found that Industrial Angels DVD, but it was twenty bucks and I only had eighteen left by that point. However, I did get...
An Aria CD. More specifically, Chimera, the one with Shtil' on it. For four dollars. I don't know what I was expecting, but it's just sort of generic rock, so I'll probably just rip the original of Shtil' and give the CD to my brother 'cos he likes that sort of music and I don't. The guy has a decent voice (and I like how he did the higher part near the beginning where it goes Штил - сходим с ума) but the music in general isn't my taste I guess. And dammit, I wanted that Industrial Angels DVD.
When we got back the teacher noticed that there was a movie theater right across the street from the hotel. So of course she asked if we wanted to see a movie, and of course since the moviegoing party was made up mostly of girls we saw Troy. And... well. That was based off the Illiad? I never would've guessed. Helen was more skanky than beautiful, Agamemnon got killed by some temple girl (not Clytemnestra!), and the war appeared to last weeks rather than years. And even I'll admit that Brad Pitt was kind of sexy, in a gratuitous-sex-scenes sort of way. There was enough gore and nudity to keep me from walking out, and it didn't suck painfully, it just sort of... sucked. And Orlando Bloom can't act. And they took all the gay out >=O What's ancient Greece without the guy-on-guy action? Overall it was just entertaining enough to be worth my seven bucks, but not enough to be worth only getting five hours of sleep because it ended at one in the fucking morning.
So on Sunday they dropped us somewhere near Strawberry Fields in Central Park, right in the middle of the AIDS walk. After going around in circles and being generally frustrated by the barriers they put up for the walk, we finally emerged on Avenue of the Americas and one of the seniors remembered the porno shops we'd seen on the way in. And then we realized two things: there were two over-eighteens in our group, and I knew exactly where the porn shops were, having remembered them in relation to the Majestic theater. So, being the geniuses we are, we decided to walk there. And we walked. And walked. And walked. Counting the fact that we were dropped around 72nd street, we walked about thirty blocks to get to those damn porn shops, passing in the process through Times Square and going past the Majestic (which I had to be dragged bodily away from, as no one else in the group was particularly interested in ogling the huge photos from the show that are set up outside). And we finally got there, and we discovered that you have to be 21 to buy porn in New York City, or at least at those particular places. So Ivan bought one of the other underagers a pack of cigarettes and we pooled our money and took a cab back. Fun, but now my legs ache. A lot. Power-walking 30 blocks in heavy combat boots while being totally out of shape can do that to a person.
The rest... To make a long story short: I over-ate. I got sunburned again. I fell asleep during the ballet and had interesting dreams involving Christoph Schneider, one of those girls from Troy, and leather handcuffs (!). I attempted to do my math homework on the ride back and failed miserably because conics are teh suck.
Anyway, I really liked the group I got to walk around with--not only were the seniors willing to buy us pr0n, but I got to be my little control-freak self and direct us around, even if it meant walking from Central Park to Times Square for what turned out to be a pointless journey.
And excuse me, my version of the Robert Englund Phantom has just arrived. Must go watch.
Let's see... maybe I should go through it event by event?
I have no appreciation for most art, and was therefore bored out of my skull until I found an exhibit that had some Renaissance paintings in it. There was actually a half-size 'practice' for one of the statues that adorn the Paris Opera, how cool is that? And some ancient Greek sculpture as well. Other than that, blech, boring. Most of it was modern art, and I hate modern art.
Brighton Beach, for you fellow non-New Yorkers, is a part of Brooklyn that's predominantly Russian. Sort of like a Slavic Chinatown. So we had a sort of lunch/dinner at this restaurant called Tatiana's, (and in what's fast becoming a pattern, I was kicked out of the girls' room and had to explain--in Russian--that I was not a boy) and even though I wasn't hungry and I hate restaurants I did choke down some chicken without having an allergic reaction to that suspicious sauce on the side. Afterward we were let loose in Brighton Beach with orders to go on a 'scavenger hunt' and interview immigrants and other nonsense, and proceeded to run off to Coney Island and then to get lost in Brooklyn. We did get back to the meeting place on time, and we did make our way into the heavily Russian part of Brighton Beach. There were all these book/music/video stores, and I noticed two things: one, all the foreign (mostly Russian with a little Japanese for some reason) music was dirt cheap; and two, whoever stocks the record stores has good taste. Lots of Rammstein =D I even found that Industrial Angels DVD, but it was twenty bucks and I only had eighteen left by that point. However, I did get...
An Aria CD. More specifically, Chimera, the one with Shtil' on it. For four dollars. I don't know what I was expecting, but it's just sort of generic rock, so I'll probably just rip the original of Shtil' and give the CD to my brother 'cos he likes that sort of music and I don't. The guy has a decent voice (and I like how he did the higher part near the beginning where it goes Штил - сходим с ума) but the music in general isn't my taste I guess. And dammit, I wanted that Industrial Angels DVD.
When we got back the teacher noticed that there was a movie theater right across the street from the hotel. So of course she asked if we wanted to see a movie, and of course since the moviegoing party was made up mostly of girls we saw Troy. And... well. That was based off the Illiad? I never would've guessed. Helen was more skanky than beautiful, Agamemnon got killed by some temple girl (not Clytemnestra!), and the war appeared to last weeks rather than years. And even I'll admit that Brad Pitt was kind of sexy, in a gratuitous-sex-scenes sort of way. There was enough gore and nudity to keep me from walking out, and it didn't suck painfully, it just sort of... sucked. And Orlando Bloom can't act. And they took all the gay out >=O What's ancient Greece without the guy-on-guy action? Overall it was just entertaining enough to be worth my seven bucks, but not enough to be worth only getting five hours of sleep because it ended at one in the fucking morning.
So on Sunday they dropped us somewhere near Strawberry Fields in Central Park, right in the middle of the AIDS walk. After going around in circles and being generally frustrated by the barriers they put up for the walk, we finally emerged on Avenue of the Americas and one of the seniors remembered the porno shops we'd seen on the way in. And then we realized two things: there were two over-eighteens in our group, and I knew exactly where the porn shops were, having remembered them in relation to the Majestic theater. So, being the geniuses we are, we decided to walk there. And we walked. And walked. And walked. Counting the fact that we were dropped around 72nd street, we walked about thirty blocks to get to those damn porn shops, passing in the process through Times Square and going past the Majestic (which I had to be dragged bodily away from, as no one else in the group was particularly interested in ogling the huge photos from the show that are set up outside). And we finally got there, and we discovered that you have to be 21 to buy porn in New York City, or at least at those particular places. So Ivan bought one of the other underagers a pack of cigarettes and we pooled our money and took a cab back. Fun, but now my legs ache. A lot. Power-walking 30 blocks in heavy combat boots while being totally out of shape can do that to a person.
The rest... To make a long story short: I over-ate. I got sunburned again. I fell asleep during the ballet and had interesting dreams involving Christoph Schneider, one of those girls from Troy, and leather handcuffs (!). I attempted to do my math homework on the ride back and failed miserably because conics are teh suck.
Anyway, I really liked the group I got to walk around with--not only were the seniors willing to buy us pr0n, but I got to be my little control-freak self and direct us around, even if it meant walking from Central Park to Times Square for what turned out to be a pointless journey.
And excuse me, my version of the Robert Englund Phantom has just arrived. Must go watch.