Me and Julio Down by the Bus Station
If you've seen me around you'll know that the last few days have been very eventful.
A highlight was my trip to Jax on the bus. I'll post some soundfile evidence on the website in a day or two, but here's the story for now:
I brought my laptop and two mics on the bus and was setting up to record any interesting sounds I heard.
This OBNOXIOUS and traditionally attractive (and totally abusing that fact and basically getting by in life on that, it seemed) girl headed to Maine named Katina turned around and said "What are you doing?". Her seatmate, the NYC-bound Julio Cerrano, also turned around with questioning eyes. In truth I was recording them, but I told her I was recording ambient bus noise.
They got very excited about being recorded. I gave them the mics and a pair of headphones and gave them a 4-track song I'd mixed down to my hard drive as a background track and asked them to make up a song. Katina choked until later on, but Julio did what some have described as easy listening rap, rap deilvered offbeat in a monotone plaintive voice, the same phrase over and over again, "Mamacita, porque te amo, en este cancion, mamacita, mia querida, mi amorcita", etc., etc., etc.
Katina, too nervous to come up with anything on her own, busted out a version of "Lean On Me" that I wound up harmonizing with her on to get her to keep going.
The results are pretty bad and kinda funny, but I burned them both copies of our jams and they FREAKED. Katina, who was the loudest bus passenger I've ever heard, even before I gave her the mic, wouldn't stop saying "Oh my GOD, that's MEEEE!!!! I SOUND SO GOOD!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHahahahHAHA!"
Julio just sat there quietly.
I gave them both my e-mail and phone number written on the disc, I don't know why.
And I wouldn't call that a mistake, exactly, but something happened tonight that would give me the chills if I didn't have a strong stomach for weirdness.
I'm in the UF computer lab. My cellphone rings- it's a Brooklyn number.
"Hello?"
"Chath?" says a muffled staticy voice on the other end.
"Yeah, who's this?"
"Thees ees Julio from the bus."
"Oh, shit, Julio! What's up, man? Did you listen to the CD?"
"Ya, I listen now. I like alot!!"
"Cool, man..."
We chitchat a little bit, I ask him if he made it alright, and he all of the sudden starts asking me weird shit like if I knew of a place he could stay because he's sick of living with his Mom. He says he wants to move to Florida, get out, get a girlfriend. I figure he's just being awkward, not crazy, so I say I dunno about that but I'll call him next time I'm in Brooklyn and we can have a beer or something.
He reiterated his need to move out and his loneliness. His conversation was, I realized, fragmented, moving from one subject to another with no segue and bringing up subjects with me that you usually only bring up with people you at least know a little bit more than being Greyhound pals with. I realized that this was a lonely guy. He asked me to ask my friends if they had any rooms to rent down here, I lied and told him I would. That's not a nice thing to do, but I was pretty floored at the moment, and was laughing and in general not taking the conversation very seriously, it was so surreal.
But I hadn't seen anything yet. He ends the conversation with, "Okay, I love you!" in a sing-songy way like he'd say to his grandma, and hangs up.
Whoa. He's insane or he's gay or he's both, and he's got my number.
Now maybe Katina will send me an e-mail claiming I fathered her children or something. What a rad trip. I don't plan on calling Julio, but I have a feeling he'll be calling me again and that should lead to more disturbing fragmented loneliness and desperation. I'll try to have a taperecorder nearby to document.
Check back later on and hear about my first two days subbing. Day One happened already, and all I learned was that middle school kids don't give a FUCK. I'll leave you with this image: me, a terrified and amused grin on my face, standing in the middle of the cloud of seventh graders doing WWF moves on each other for fifteen minutes straight, every now and then starting to yell "HEY-" but always cutting myself off, since the first five or six times I appealed to them verbally that they just looked at me with big smiles and said, "It's alright, man, it's just playfighting." At one point a kid picked up his friend by the neck and body slammed him. Lo, the portable did shake.
Sincerely,
Chad
A highlight was my trip to Jax on the bus. I'll post some soundfile evidence on the website in a day or two, but here's the story for now:
I brought my laptop and two mics on the bus and was setting up to record any interesting sounds I heard.
This OBNOXIOUS and traditionally attractive (and totally abusing that fact and basically getting by in life on that, it seemed) girl headed to Maine named Katina turned around and said "What are you doing?". Her seatmate, the NYC-bound Julio Cerrano, also turned around with questioning eyes. In truth I was recording them, but I told her I was recording ambient bus noise.
They got very excited about being recorded. I gave them the mics and a pair of headphones and gave them a 4-track song I'd mixed down to my hard drive as a background track and asked them to make up a song. Katina choked until later on, but Julio did what some have described as easy listening rap, rap deilvered offbeat in a monotone plaintive voice, the same phrase over and over again, "Mamacita, porque te amo, en este cancion, mamacita, mia querida, mi amorcita", etc., etc., etc.
Katina, too nervous to come up with anything on her own, busted out a version of "Lean On Me" that I wound up harmonizing with her on to get her to keep going.
The results are pretty bad and kinda funny, but I burned them both copies of our jams and they FREAKED. Katina, who was the loudest bus passenger I've ever heard, even before I gave her the mic, wouldn't stop saying "Oh my GOD, that's MEEEE!!!! I SOUND SO GOOD!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHahahahHAHA!"
Julio just sat there quietly.
I gave them both my e-mail and phone number written on the disc, I don't know why.
And I wouldn't call that a mistake, exactly, but something happened tonight that would give me the chills if I didn't have a strong stomach for weirdness.
I'm in the UF computer lab. My cellphone rings- it's a Brooklyn number.
"Hello?"
"Chath?" says a muffled staticy voice on the other end.
"Yeah, who's this?"
"Thees ees Julio from the bus."
"Oh, shit, Julio! What's up, man? Did you listen to the CD?"
"Ya, I listen now. I like alot!!"
"Cool, man..."
We chitchat a little bit, I ask him if he made it alright, and he all of the sudden starts asking me weird shit like if I knew of a place he could stay because he's sick of living with his Mom. He says he wants to move to Florida, get out, get a girlfriend. I figure he's just being awkward, not crazy, so I say I dunno about that but I'll call him next time I'm in Brooklyn and we can have a beer or something.
He reiterated his need to move out and his loneliness. His conversation was, I realized, fragmented, moving from one subject to another with no segue and bringing up subjects with me that you usually only bring up with people you at least know a little bit more than being Greyhound pals with. I realized that this was a lonely guy. He asked me to ask my friends if they had any rooms to rent down here, I lied and told him I would. That's not a nice thing to do, but I was pretty floored at the moment, and was laughing and in general not taking the conversation very seriously, it was so surreal.
But I hadn't seen anything yet. He ends the conversation with, "Okay, I love you!" in a sing-songy way like he'd say to his grandma, and hangs up.
Whoa. He's insane or he's gay or he's both, and he's got my number.
Now maybe Katina will send me an e-mail claiming I fathered her children or something. What a rad trip. I don't plan on calling Julio, but I have a feeling he'll be calling me again and that should lead to more disturbing fragmented loneliness and desperation. I'll try to have a taperecorder nearby to document.
Check back later on and hear about my first two days subbing. Day One happened already, and all I learned was that middle school kids don't give a FUCK. I'll leave you with this image: me, a terrified and amused grin on my face, standing in the middle of the cloud of seventh graders doing WWF moves on each other for fifteen minutes straight, every now and then starting to yell "HEY-" but always cutting myself off, since the first five or six times I appealed to them verbally that they just looked at me with big smiles and said, "It's alright, man, it's just playfighting." At one point a kid picked up his friend by the neck and body slammed him. Lo, the portable did shake.
Sincerely,
Chad