Me, my awkward portrait stance and I.

The house smelt like moldy potato chips but – a more-than-redeeming factor – was one block from the Obamas’.

Hallelujah! That’s three rolls down, four more to [develop]. More to come later.

From the “Flickr archives”

OH LORDIE, why have I gotten like ten squillion headaches during the past five days? Is it because I start high school in a week and two days (and have to read literally about fourteen-thousand pages of Greek mythology before)? Because Danny, Leah, Kendall and Charlie all went back to L.A.?>!>?!@>!!?!

Speaking of which.. Aside from my posts about the aquarium trip and being accompanied by Danny and Leah on the way back from camp, I don’t think I’ve talked hardly at all about that whole bunch and how they stayed with us for something close to or at least in the ballpark of TWO WHOLE WEEKS this past.. two weeks. What a BLAST!

For the most-part, we really did just the ussh while they were in town. That is: eat at Manny’s, eat at Superdawg, eat at Lou Malnati’s, eat at L. Wood’s, eat Garrett’s popcorn, repeat. And now, Charlie. (Enough said.) I would post pictures of that guy but they’re mostly film, which haven’t been developed, which I have to drop off at Walgreens, along with three other rolls, which are only have of my whole “film queue.” (stupid Walgreens discontinued like 99% of their film service, along with like every other photo shop in the country.) But then! I will post those pictures.

After all that eating (we are a Jewish family, after all) we did find some time to go see Tavi in a play. She played an eight-year-old boy. We were amused.

Even then, though, we found ourselves eating incredibly ridiculously delicious cakeballs made by some parent at her theater (sorry, theatre) company. We were full.

Then Danny & Fam had to go on some STUPID ROAD TRIP to go see some supposedly “close friends” that had moved away to North Carolina some years ago. Just kidding, we were really happy that they got to see them (and probably had an agonizing, but fun, time in the car). But it was one smelly bummer that they had to go. Luckily, they came back after their cross-country trek for one more night before flying home to L.A., just enough time to have a heartwarming family sing-along (hosted by Jeff and Charlie).

a mix.

Today I watched half of I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, now on Netflix Instant Watch. It was the first time I’d seen it (or half of it, at least) since I was probably about six. Later I tried – as part of my monthly “hey, I’m gonna try to record a song!”s – layin’ down some tracks of Bob/The Band’s This Wheel’s On Fire, but mostly just ended up playing with a distortion pedal in my room. EDGY, right?! Teen rebellion! Anti-establishment! Rock and roll~~~.

Now to go read about some people with really weird names and gods that live in the stars and stuff. Goodnight!

p.s. Electronic Monkey has a new face.

I sat at the same table as Bill Haverchuck.

Also known as: the first pre-elevendy-squillion o’clock wakeup time of the summer. It was really fun, though; definitely worth the earliness. I got me books, me locker details, me schedule, me planner, me forms, but NOT me student ID. They’re on backorder (something about out-of-stock paper or something or something). Darn! What with private school and such I’ve never had an ID before. It sounds so exciting! Officialness! I’ll just have to wait.

This summer has been really full of high school preparation stuff. I also attended one out of three weeks of “freshman connection,” (missed two for Spain and camp) at which I was run through classes and consequentially met possibly definitely the single most passive aggressive person maybe in the history of public school educators. [The mystery paggro person's paggro-ness] was actually pretty funny, except for when it was against you in your FACE. Not fun (or funny). But other than that, I am so. Pumped. For this school year.

watchitwatchitwatchit

Fralskhsdgkl. Got back from Michigan yesterday. It would have been an even awesome-r little trip if I hadn’t caught a disgusting fever/cold bug. We watched Babies to make up for it, which was ridiculously cute and made me feel really sentimental. I also watched my very first episode of Mad Men and while I sort of had no idea what was going on (what’s it, season 4 now? never seen an episode before) it seems like the coolest freaking show ever. I also also watched my very first episode of Jersey Shore. But we don’t need to talk about that*.

We went to a store and there were nipples.

Oy.. Have to go absorb the last few… one week (and a half) of summer. Later jellyfish.

* Danny and I are Pauly D. and The Situation whut whuuuut.

awkward family photo

Wow, way to make summer camp like some sort of [redacted for the sake of not being 100% offensive], Spencer. Or an AA meeting. Or did that make sense? It was an amazing past something-between-3-4-weeks. Albeit mosquito-infested, withering-weather-wise, abrasive-Israeli-filled, Party-In-The-USA-enchanted… all that good stuff, it was such a “blast.” (I feel just plain thankful that my family is able to send my brother and I to such a cool place.)

I windsurfed, biked, wakeboarded, screamed, service-attended, Bat-Mitzvah-attended, pie-eated, Wisconsin-Mullet-Convention-State-Fair-went, and much, much more ($29.99 only call now). Unfortunately – other than the microscopic thumbnails available on the camp website – I don’t have too many photos to share from all that. Although I do really like taking pictures, lugging around a camera was sort of the last thing I wanted to be doing / should have been doing during my time at camp. Mostly because it can be a pain to be carrying one (dslr or point-and-shoot or disposable, whatever) around all the time, especially when you’re dirty and mosquito-bitten and being thrown in the lake. But also because there are other things to focus on! Like pooping!

Aka, pretty much the only picture I took. (Don’t worry, there isn’t any actual poop involved.)

Good times, good times… aside from the smorgasbord of activities I just listed all in past-tense “-ed,” I did a few other thangs this camp summer. My “division” took a trip to the Wisconsin Dells’ Mt. Olympus theme park for the day. There were movie nights (Mean Girls / Home Along whuuu) and dances, all very fun. Oh, I also got a letter from God:

Sorry for the big white boxes. Just a lil’ security. SPOT THE HAMENTASHEN!

Like I already mentioned we also made an appearance at the Mullet Convention. You haven’t heard of that? All the rage in the eighties. Oh, wait, you’d probably know of it as Wisconsin State Fair. Synonyms. Y’know.

That was really really fun. All except the part when my group went inside the convention center part (i.e. the part where they sell ShamWows) to visit one hot sauce demo booth. Moderate-to-somewhat-long story short, I soon found a pretzel dipped in one of their SPICIEST BREWS on its way down my esophagus, which led to me, sitting on the floor, spitting acidic slime into a souvenir root beer cup and pounding Herb’s twenty-five-cent strawberry banana milk. (The real loss here is 46 oz. of root beer. Forget taste buds!) But yeah man camp rules whooooooooo~

Sailingsailingsailingsailing. Top 3 highlights.

Something really interesting about this year was the DIVERSITY of my cabin. Last month, I lived with two non-Enlglish-understanding Israelis, an English-understanding Israeli counselor, an Australian counselor, and finally a Swiss kid, who[m] only spoke French and played the same song on his iPod (outloud) literally about fourteen squillion times. (To make matters worse, if there ever were an award ceremony in regards to the World’s Most Repetitive French Electro-Pop Song – which I’m SURE there is – this would win, and if not, at least be nominated, or win Best Supporting Actress.) This was a really super fun thing, an awesome opportunity to pick up on some other languages, cultures, etc., but it was no doubt the root of quite a few problems throughout the session. They just didn’t understand some of the rules us Amurricans apply here in our count’ry. (Insert something corny A LA “in the end, we were all brothers. Jewish brothers.” Sounds best in Big Lebowski cowboy narrator dialect.)

Hm.. There were very normal days at camp, too, with no State Fair or waterpark trips. We spent a lot of time sitting/walking/running around in blistersonmefingers heat, huddled around battery-powered-fans, biking five miles through the mountainous Wisconsin countryside, entranced in five-day-long cabin matches of Risk, catching the Israelis cheating…

And then the last days came, and we were all settling down and kinda getting pumped for the return home. Camp is awesome, but home will always be awesomer (even without waterskiing or windsurfing). Gee, that sounds so poignant! (How can I convince you I’m really a soulless teenager? “yoooo al i cAr abowt b fEmAl dogs yohhh.”) So we had our end-of-camp “Banquet” dance, and finally, the closing ceremonies.

The last day of camp (pickup day actually) was pretty funny. First the foreigners left on the O’Hare airport bus, and then the rest of my cabin all went home on the Chicago suburbs bus. So I was “the lone wolf,” as we call it (our cabin name was “DA WOLF PACK”) left behind with just one of my counselors. Boohoo. A few hours later, I was picked up! By mom, Danny, and Leah! Sammy and mine (grammar?) counselors struggled through some intense B.O. to hug us.

Another awkward family photo.

Yay for another great year at camp. Goodnight.

“The world smells different here.” That was my first thought upon arriving in London. Whether this was due to the incredible amount of smokers in the city or its 1000+ extra years of moldy history on America, I don’t know. (Back to this smoking thing for a second, though.. It really was shocking how many smokers there were not only in London, but everywhere we went. Nowadays smoking in the U.S. has kind of almost become a scarcely seen thing WHAT WITH all the “no indoors” and now “no in public” laws. Maybe it’s the EU’s backwards-compensation for good clean energy programs.)

One of the next things I noticed – after an incredible lack of non-sparkling water – was/were the cars. And I don’t just mean that they drove on the other side of the road with the driver in the passenger seat (New Zealand made me used to that one). No, “all” the cars we were seeing looked just like one of those stupid Smart Car thingys, all futuristic-y and such. Except for the Volkswagens, and black cabs.

Speaking of VW beetles, I’m not sure I can tell you how many a’punch they caused throughout the whole trip (in London especially) in that “punchbuggy! no punch-backs!” game. I guess that’s the third thing I noticed: My little brother’s fist in my arm.

Now, I bet a lot of Londoners and Englanders get sort of offended or at least TICKED OFF when f’rn’ers say this, but I – especially in the marketplaces, and cool little alleys, and this one antique shop – could not stop thinking of Harry Potter during our stay there. I never really read the books but I’ve seen a couple of the movies, and that was just enough to make me wonder where the wizard gang was chillin’ now (Hermione especially.. can I get a “whoo 4th grade crush”?! um…..). If they weren’t at Pigmoles, er Hogwarts, or whatever, THAT IS.

For real Kardashian butt though, London is a really cool-looking city. Parts of it look like the Jetsons, and parts of it (much like Chicago, but more extreme-r) look like they were built in the 1600s. BECAUSE THEY WERE HAHA. Okeydokey, enough “snogging around” (picked up some lingo, too), how about some photographs.

Canon T1i–

In terms of the Jeff Tweedy solo tour, London was my dad’s Union Chapel stop. There were a lot of things awesome about that show; two stick in me mind the most. One was how amazing Union Chapel is. So old and church-like (probably because it is a church) and great acoustically and UGH. The dressing room had this awesome wooden peg layout of all the seats in the auditorium called the Plans of Pewing. The auditorium was – according to the Plans of Pewing, duh – all pews with stone walls and crazy stained-glass windows. A comedian opened and was purty hilarious. He made clever jokes about Americans who think they’ve been abducted by aliens when really they just had a drunken night. But my most favorite part about it was this..

Bill Fay, singer, pianist and songwriter (as according to his Wikipedia article, in which Wilco is also mentioned) stopped by for a visit. My dad and Wilco have played some of his songs before on tour, I think mostly the one “Be Not So Fearful.” I’ll sum up his person by saying that he is one of the sweetest, awesomest people ever, and makes some music to match. He came on stage with my dad to sing that song and I almost cried (listen to the song).

Time to finish packing! This is most likely my last post until camp is over. Até logo!

Not pictured here: cherry spitting contests, band that was purportedly on America’s Got Talent, capture the flag, dirty feet.

Ah.. So, very very busy this week. High school ‘orientation’, plus (in terms of blogging) our Europe trip, still. And, to top it off, I’m leaving for camp this Sunday, so looks like most of that will have to hold. For now – see you later, m!#@$%f$^&@#$s.

FRAMES 5-8 – “THE WHOLE ROLL“

*Arcane reference lost on not-necessarily-younger-but-unaware audience? Casper The Friendly Ghost! Get familiar!

p.s. The comment counters temporarily say “View Comments” no matter how many are on the post (aka there are no numbers). This, along with the 99% of the Old Ones Aren’t There Anymore problem should be fixed soon.

FRAMES 25 & 26 – “THE WHOLE ROLL“

Coming home soon!