State of the Union

Snowy, rainy, cloudy, in Portland which set the perfect tone for the State of the Union address. Though my stomach was in knots for the majority of it and I wanted to slap that smug look right off Cheney's face (for those of you who watched it, how about the offsetting of the red and blue ties for Bush and Cheney. If he hadn't quit I'd think Rove came up with that one.), I realized at the end of his speech that this president of my generation, the only one that has been in office since I could vote, and the first for me to hate, was effectively over. He can war monger with Iran, he can make slippery comments about Pakistan, he can even say that New Orleans is doing just fine, but none of it matters anymore. In less than one years time he'll be unemployed and relaxing in Crawford. Two years from now he will be working at a consulting firm or starring in Cialis commercials and selling his autographs on eBay. It went by pretty fast I suppose. I guess slippery slopes typically work that way. I only hope that we can do better.

Back in Portland, headed to Seattle in the morning, Austin on Friday, New Orleans on Saturday. Is anyone else nervous about the Super Bowl, Super Tuesday, and Mardi Gras happening within a few days of each other. And fashion week? I am concerned that the western civilization my have an apocalyptic orgasm with all of this excitement. So, don't party too hard.

Back to the West Coast

Just got back to Portland. After a six and a half hour flight. Tired.

Travel Buddies

An eleven hour train ride is a long one, and it is amazing how much time it gives you to learn a lot about the other passengers even if you don’t say a word to them. The couple next to me is British, but they moved to Canada 42 years ago. They have a 39 year old son* (their oldest) who lives in Brooklyn in a new condo with his wife and their first grandchild. The gentleman talks louder when he has his earphones in (she apologizes for him but he doesn’t notice) and she looks forward to crossing the St. Lawrence River for the first nine hours of the trip. Albany’s pretty, but not that pretty.
The woman in front of the couple for the first half of the trip is loud, and a TMIer who does surprisingly well with the customs agent. She is an American, but has an apartment in Canada and has residency there where her Jack Russell terrier is being watched by her best friend. Her favorite movie is The Queen, which she alerts surrounding passengers to several times. Perhaps I am bitter – she is headed to New York to work in an internship capacity for The New Yorker. I considered several times stealing her passport and adopting her identity, but I’m not sure how I feel about British royalty. The man in front¬ of me was reading “Stop Being So Nice To Your Coworker,” an article printed out on Yahoo tip guide written by either Kublai Khan or Gordon Brown. He has been caught (by me) several times, checking out the fashion designer headed to the big city. The couple next to me discusses the cost of petrol. The wife is sharp with numbers.
“$3.21 a gallon. My, my. Only .80 per litre. (Canadians are paying 1.10) Wow.”
“What are you paying?” asks the American with a penchant for tiny interns with annoying non-accents. After telling him, they then talked a bit about the cost of petrol in France. She complained about how high Canadian gas taxes and car taxes were, and, smelling an ally he asked the question I wanted to ask, and have asked several people, all with similar responses.
“How do you like nationalized health care?”
“Oh, I quite like it.”
“You just said that you felt like you were being taxed a lot and not seeing anything for it?”
“Well yes, for roads and things. If I pay taxes on cars I want to see road improvements, and our roads are horrible. That’s what I’m paying for after all. If we didn’t have health care, I know we’d be alright. We’d pay for insurance and all of that and take care of ourselves, but what of the people who can’t afford it? That doesn’t seem fair to make someone choose between health care and feeding their families. My first child was born before socialized medicine and I quite preferred the system when my second was born.”
“Yes. I suppose so,” he said, “I’ll pay something like $10,000 more in taxes a year if we adopt it.”
“Well, if you will have to pay that much more, then you obviously make a lot more money. I suppose I’m a socialist at heart really. I think this is the way the system is supposed to work even if I get frustrated with it from time to time.”
He swivels back in his chair. And wipes the conversation from his memory. He’ll keep hunting for a Canadian who will tell him its okay to vote with his wallet.


*The son is a graphic designer. He started a company when he was in university in Montreal and went to Holland after winning a competition held by a bank in search of a new logo. He won, they brought him over and he worked with them for a year. They wanted him to move to London, but seeing as it was so expensive and he was so heavily recruited by a designer in Chicago, he moved and worked for the same company for a decade and then bought out the fonts segment of it and moved to Brooklyn. His wife graduated from Yale with a masters in design and they now work from home together. He just finished the new logo for the San Diego Chargers.


I am back in New York at Jennie's dad's house. Her room has a fantastic view of the Hudson river in Tarrytown NY. I'm visiting her farm today and head back to Portland this afternoon. Yes, yes I'm bicoastal.

Aurevoir Montreal

My last day in Montreal was full, fun, and fricking cold. I climbed up Mont Royal (a stunning 764 feet above sea level) and got a good view of the city in panorama. I comtemplated several times chopping off my bad little pinky to save it from the hypothermia that was sure to kill it anyways. I hiked up and down Mont Royal and St. Denise streets and then made the biggest mistake I have made since arriving here: I went into a gourmet grocery store in a solidly French neighborhood while hungry. Figs were sold by weight...I thought...but I suppose if my biggest mistake is spending ten Canadian dollars on figs I am doing alright. My bonours and bonsois are getting good enough that I can play off the fact that I hardly know any words besides those two, but if they ask me if I need a bag I am kind of screwed. Ahhhh. You are American. And then in flawless English they rub their bilingual education in my face: Do you want a bag... No, Merci. Your welcome. My train leaves at 9:30 in the AM, and I might go ice skating at the metro before it departs if I can get up early enough. Or maybe I will spend the time at a coffee shop watching French Candaians scuddle around and talk in their cute little accents for a little longer...

Montreal Part Deux (Not fluent. Yet...)

So, the whole purpose of me coming to Montreal (or atleast the fake purpose to get me back up here without feeling as though I am frittering away my money) was to visit Concordia University and meet the faculty of the Communication Dept. and check on the status of my application. After checking out of hostel and meeting up with my couchsurfing host (its a netwroking system for travelers who are willing to share their couches for free...) who is a costume designer and very French, though her English is impressive and better than some Southerners I know, I headed across town to the school. I grabbed a cup of coffee at a shop near the campus, and asked the whereabouts of the journalism building - the girl working at the coffee shop had just graduated from Concordia with a major in...you guessed it...journalism! She pointed me toward the building so latte in hand I headed to check it out. After wondering around the amazing building that is only two years old, incredibly technologically savvy and entirely devoted to media studies, I found the office I was looking for and introduced myself to the administratvie assistant (that is right, we never use the word receptionist any more) and she led me to the department chairs assistant. After a brief intro to the school she led me to the board director of admissions to make sure all my pieces and parts of my application were complete. She asked me my last name in front of him and as I spelled out D-U-N-N he said, Ah the one from Colorado, youère applying for the fellowhip (no question mark, french keyboard). Its good to put a face to a name. And then, as if that were not enough to put a pep in my step, the co-chair of the department encouraged me to speak with the other department chair as our research interests align and if I got the fellowship I would be working with her. So. Keep your fingers crossed. If I get the fellowship the university would pay for all of my tuition and a living stipend. Cha-ching. The city was windy and cold today with a good foot of snow on the ground. Boo hiss. Tomorrow, Mont Placè hike, hunting down a pair of sneakers, and meeting with the department chair...wish me luck.

How to Make Comments...

As many of you old folks (just kidding! kind of.) have asked me how to comment to my posts I am posting instructions for you.

Click on comment after an entry and type in the box presented to you. To comment on the blog type in google account (you may have to sign up for one: it's free and easy; and amby, you can use ambrose.daigre and type in your password for your email).

Parking?

After an 11 hour train ride, a 15 minute metro jaunt, and walk in the cold I reached my hostel in Montreal. The staff gave me a quick tour, I made up my bed, and plopped down on the couch in the common area. A few quick introductions, and I decided that bed would be the best bet to ensure a pleasant next day. But alas, after hanging out with a pair from Australia, a Brazilian, a Chilean, and a Spaniard, bed seemed like a silly idea. So after some haggling about where we should go we settled on a gay night club down the street (called Parking)...fast forward to 4:00 in the a.m. and my feet almost refuse to carry me home after several hours of dancing with flamingly gay men, two straight Australians, and an awkward Irishmen. The multi-lingual culture here is mind-blowing. Almost everyone I have met transitions from French, English, and Spanish flawlessly. I am obsessed with learning French now, and am excited about the prospect of going to school here...

Train to Montreal (a.k.a. Oh, Canada!)

Drinking shitty coffee on the train and working on a story could only be more romanticized if I was ashing into my previous cup of coffee and typing on a typewriter that magically materialized. Who would lug a typewriter on the subway, through Penn Station, and onto the tiny tray table of an Amtrak car? How annoying would it be if the person you had to sit next to for 11 hours was clamoring away on a Corona? Hmm. Ultimately that character would be thrown like Momma from the train.

Customs just boarded the train, and began interrogating me and then passed me on to another official. He didn’t believe my life. And I suppose that sometimes I don’t either. Being a lucky duck doesn’t translate well to border patrol apparently. But, after saying “It sounds too good to be true so it probably is. Right?” He slapped his stamp onto my passport, and walked away. No smile involved. Oh, Canada! After seeing the nice Canadians last night in Michael Moore’s Sicko, I was in for a nice surprise when meeting these staunch folk. Maybe Bill O’Reilly is right and Moore is a hyperbolic son of a bitch.

Another fun twist: the bathroom doors to my train car do not lock well and I have walked in on not one, but two other passengers peeing. The first time, the door quickly slid open, the woman inside and I were standing face to face as she buttoned her pants, we made eye contact and she quickly slid the door shut. And then we had to make eye contact every time I walked by her row. Talk about awkward.

In the mountains of upstate New York where the frozen ponds and white spaces look almost
Canadian

NYC's Alright With Me... (Get it? It rhyhmes.)

In an attempt to send my mother off at JFK airport of her way home, I flew to NY to visit my friend Jennie and hang in the city. Unfortunately, Singapore Air is comfortable with leaving an hour early if all passengers are at the gate...so the entire premise was rendered moot. But I still got to go out on the town with Jennie's childhood friends to two mildly ridiculous, trendy, and jam-packed clubs. We were escorted by bouncers to second floor balcony parties and danced until four in the morning. A 24 hour creperie treated us to chocolate/rasberry and goat cheese/egg/mushroom crepes, and a taxi treated us to a ride back to the upper west side.

PDX

After a momentous dinner at my favorite restaurant in Portland and a late night in the dead cold city, I awoke a few hours later to get to the airport in time for a flight to NYC. Gauzi, my friend's favorite taxi driver (he has invited her to Jordan to meet his nephew), picked me up at four in the AM and now I sit in the Portland airport. Bobby Fischer died, and maybe it's the before dawn brain, but it seems like a huge blow to the world. A light just went out in Iceland.

San Francisco Treat

After a short day in the land of the movie star we headed up the Pacific coast to San Francisco. Pulling up to an apartment in the mission district, our friend leapt into the passenger seat and sat in Kathleen's lap as we circled the blocks to find a parking spot - we managed to finish all of our catching up before finding one on Valencia. An air mattress (that quickly deflated) felt like a sofa for a queen and we slept in until 10. Breakfast, and then to the BART, Kathleen and I met up with a friend from Austin who happened to be moving to Ventura the next day, climbed Mount Davidson for a great 360 degree view of the city on a cold and cloudy day . Dinner in the Haight-Ashbury district and a long wrong-way bus ride to the end of the line wound us back to the mission and back to bed. One more day in SF: breakfast, sneaker shopping (not for me, I swear), Dolores Park (including but not limited to people-watching, card playing, improvising songs to Emily's goofy guitar riffs), karaoke bar (appropriately named Amnesia), and a gay bar called Lexington Club.
Up at 9 and on the road through beautiful mountains of Northern California. The sun sets on the cold mountains of Oregon...as we enter Portland we are laughing about something, anything just as we were laughing when we drove away in Austin. Success.
Kathleen's apartment is awesome, but we go to meet up with an old friend at a bar, and I stay the night with her.

Venice Beach

Every step of the way, the weather and timing of events has fit flawlessly. Sunset over the desert, city lights at night, silhouetted mountains, yada yada yada. And when we woke up to 70 degree sunny weather in LA in the middle of January it sustained the surreality of the trip. California feels like a movie set. I had my first experience with a fixed gear bike, which is scary at first, seems impossible in a hilly city, but still warmed me up to the idea of having two bikes. We ate breakfast at the Omelette Parlor, which oddly enough got its start in Colorado Springs, and was a staple of my weekend diets in college. The menu is the same as is the decor. Weird to find, weirder to experience.

From there, after a few guilt trips by our host who wanted us to stay longer (which we wanted but couldn't fit in the trip) we hit the Pacific Coast Highway via Sunset Blvd. Seriously. Sunset Blvd. to the Pacific Ocean. Sunset was perfect and lingered as we wound around the surfing holes, sharp mountains, and tan people.

The Land of the Beautiful

The vast expanse of desert offers a nice contrast to painfully desolate and poorly planned development. Ewww I say. Kathleen pointed out, as I wrote off the entire state of Arizona because of the sights from the interstate, that perhaps I was being unfair. The state does house the Grand Canyon after all.

The sun fell over the desert as we entered California and lodged the Subaru in bumper to bumper traffic miles outside of congested LA. I felt more like a tourist experiencing a famous trait of a city than a frustrated motorist. Cruising around with Texas plates in California is a mixed blessing...so we hit the city at night and met up with a friend in Santa Monica. After some Chinese food, a few drinks at a restaurant that a friend cooks for, and a conversation with a witty editor of some notable television shows, we rested our heads on two surprisingly comfortable couches.

Out of Dodge

After a two hour late start and a bumbling bike rack, we cruise to Tuscon, and, in an obvious miscalculation (by me) end up getting in way later than we expected. Map scales were never a strong suite. So we get in to Tuscon at 2 in the A.M., snooze until 9 and hit the road. Onto Los Angeles...

Mom in. Mom out.

Quest For Fame and Fortune

Here is the premise: jam one-tenth of possessions in box labeled "Hey, if you want it just take it. Seriously." one fifth very neatly in a sedan (see Volkswagon Jetta), a solid half into a storage unit (see The Cubby Hole in Tejas), and then jettison the remainder into the trash and out of your mind. Drive to gas station, galk at the price of oil (why pay for a military presence if I'm not getting reimbursed at the pump?), fill up, merge. The start of the new year seemed the appropriate time to drop all obligation and responsibility for a flippant few months of doing nothing and everything at the same time. I'm now in Austin Texas watching hipsters refill coffee and casually swish hair back into place... oh the places I'll go in 2008!

Beginnings

I always reserved the blogsphere for creepy men with googly glasses, smelly socks, and few, if any, social skills. And yet here I am. January 1. My journey begins.