Seattle, Washington More Than You Could Ever Possibly Want to Know About Me

I was invited to Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont last month to speak about the dancing video and how I made it. I rambled on for 90 minutes and then took everyone outside to shoot a dancing clip.

I've edited the talk down to 75 minutes, yanking some of the more boring bits and the parts where I said stupid stuff I'd rather not have said. Oh, were it only possible to do that in real life...

There are also a few scattered moments where I'm cut off in mid-sentence. Nothing is being hidden there, it's just the result of the shoddy technique I used to convert the videotape recording into a YouTube-friendly form. Apologies for any annoyance it causes.

The talk is broken into three parts. It addresses a lot of the stuff I get asked all the time, so I thought it might be interesting for anyone who wants to know more.

I'd like to thank Tom Myers, a professor at Champlain, who contacted me, invited me out, and took a gamble on me not choking horribly and embarassing both of us. I'd not done anything like this before and I still don't know what made him think I could do it, but I am grateful for the opportunity.

I really enjoyed doing this and would like to keep doing it. Feel free to contact me if you'd like me to come to your school, university, office, cult compound, secret society headquarters -- whatever. I rely heavily on the Q&A for what I talk about, so it's different every time. What you see here isn't necessarily what you'll get.

Athens, Greece Map is Working

A deep, heartfelt thanks to Stephan Pirson for fixing my map page. I'll try not to screw it up again.

Folks in Europe, for the next couple weeks you'll be able to track my location with a fair degree of accuracy. And if you're willing to lurk in train stations, you may even be able to hunt me down.

I like Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bars. Thrust one at me in a public place and I'll dance for you.

In a pinch, I'll accept Snickers.

Athens, Greece No Dancing at the Parthenon

So I finally got arrested for dancing.

Woke up this morning on a ferry boat to the sound of a guy yelling at me like I was a vagrant.

Looked around, saw an old Indian guy blowing snot out of his nose on the floor next to me. Realized I was a vagrant.

The ferry had come into port at Athens. Literally everyone but the Indian guy disembarked while I slept.

It was 5am. The sun was a long way from rising. I have no guidebook covering Greece – didn’t even know where to tell a cab driver to take me. I wandered the streets for an hour until the first coffee shop opened, then loitered there until it was early enough to get a hotel room without paying for the previous night.

Finding a taxi took half an hour. Turns out the bus drivers are on strike today. When I found a guy and he discovered I’m American, all he wanted to talk about was politics. When he found out I’m from Seattle, all he wanted to talk about was grunge music.

He took me to a reasonably cheap hotel near the Acropolis and I slept for six hours. Waking in the afternoon, I set out on foot for the Parthenon.

Talked to some ancient Greeks.

“Where you from?”
“America.”
“America? Too big.”
“Okay. Um. How about Switzerland?”
“No. America is a big place. In what part do you live?”
“Oh. Seattle.”
“I see. Seattle is very different from Alabama.”
“Yes it is.”
“FUCKING SHIT ALABAMA!”
“Uh.”
“They still hanging blacks in Alabama.”
“Yeah, we stopped doing that in Seattle a while ago.”

Greeks don’t beat around the Bush. People often ask me if I have trouble traveling as an American. The answer is no. I generally get a positive response for stating my nationality – or at least the benefit of the doubt. But I haven’t spent much time in Europe. I’m learning the reception isn’t quite as warm these days.

At least they know the difference between a red state and a blue state.

I don’t like wearing messages on my clothing, but it might save me some trouble while I’m here if I state my political affiliations concisely across my chest.

One thing European attitudes remind me of is how narrow the spectrum for debate is back home. Even the fact that it’s a spectrum is irritating. As Jon Stewart points out, opinions can have a Y-axis.

We’re confined to arguing over stupid crap like gays in the military. If we were to let Europe in, we’d be arguing over gay orgies in the military – which is, to me, a more compelling point of contention.

Even the graffiti in Greece is achingly wishy-washy.

Continued walking up the hill. I seem to have a knack for finding the less trodden entrances to places like this.

Oh, look. An amphitheater.

Ancient amphitheaters are everywhere. How come they stick around so much longer than every other kind of structure?

…hey, you know what? I bet it’s the lack of roofs.

I’m starting to realize there’s a difference between having an interest in history and an interest in really old stuff. Rarely does the really old stuff tell us much about why its creators were important. We think it’s going to, but then we get there and it doesn’t. So we take pictures and we leave.

I’ll admit that as the dancing video goes, standing in front of the ancient stuff is largely obligatory. There are places like Angkor Wat and Abu Simbel that leave me truly astonished. They have a magical quality. But the Taj Mahal? Pyramids? Parthenon? To me, it’s just a pile of rocks that doesn’t say anything worth saying.

The sun goes behind some clouds, so I sit down on the bench, pull out my Sudoku book, and I wait for it to come out again. A short guy in a black leather jacket sits next to me. He pulls out a scratchy AM receiver and starts blasting some Greek talk radio, absolutely crushing my moment of serenity.

The sun begins to go down and a couple Japanese guys are taking pictures of each other. I ask one of them to hold the camera while I dance.

“10 seconds,” I explain.
“Okay. No problem.”

So I start to dance, and the guy in the leather jacket gets up from the bench and walks into the middle of the shot.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asks.
“I’m dancing.”
“You can’t do that here. You must delete it.”
"You're joking, right?"
"Delete the picture right now!"
“I’m not going to delete anything.”

The Japanese guy senses trouble. “10 seconds,” he says, hands me the camera and leaves.

“What you are doing is disrespectful.”
“I don’t think it’s disrespectful.”
“Give me the camera.”
“I’m not going to give you the camera.”
“Then take your things and come with me.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Then I will call the police and you will go to jail.”
“Who are you? Show me some identification.”
“I will show you identification later. Come with me right now.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you show me identification.”

So the guy goes and he gets a security guard.

“Show me the video,” says the guard. I show him the video.

“You cannot do that here!”
“Why not?”
“It is against the rules.”
“What rules? Show me the sign that says No Dancing.”
“Remove the video.”
“No.”
“Then come with me.”

The guy grabs me by the arm and starts pulling me down the steps. This is incredible, I think. How far are they willing to go with this? How far am I willing to go with this?

They take me to the front entrance and explain to the head guard, in Greek, what I was doing. The head guard pulls me down a path, around a corner, and behind a building, so no tourists can see.

“Listen to me. The Parthenon may mean nothing to you, but to us it is a HOLY RELIGIOUS SITE!”

Oh really? And when’s the last time you made sacrifice to Athena?

“Give me the camera.”
“I’m not giving you the camera.”
“Give me your passport.”
“I’m not giving you my passport.”
“Then you will spend the night in jail.”
“I’ve slept in worse places.”

I hold my hands out in front of me for cuffing.

He leads me inside to what can vaguely be described as an interrogation room. Maybe it's just for lunch breaks, but in the moment it feels a lot like an interrogation room. He asks a couple more times for the camera. The response doesn’t change.

The guy in the leather jacket who started all this asks, “In your house, do you not have rules?”
“We don’t have any rules against dancing, no.”
“At your work. They do not have rules?”
“As far as I know, I’ve never worked anywhere that had a No Dancing policy.”
“Why do you do this?”
“I’m traveling. I do this everywhere I go.”
“And you do not think it is disrespectful?”
“I think it’s anything but disrespectful.”
“You are American, yes?”

Had to see that one coming.

A policeman walks in and asks what this is all about. They go through it all again. I’m led out the gates to a squad car. More discussion.

Another policeman asks, “What is it that you did?”
“I danced.”
“Show me.”

So I dance for the cop. He shakes his head. “You cannot do this here. Delete the film and you can leave.”

Nope.

And into the car I go. We get to the police station. They take me up the elevator and sit me down with the guy in charge, presumably the precinct chief.

He asks me all the same questions. I give him all the same answers.

“Show me this video.”

I play the Parthenon clip. I also still have Ephesus and Troy on the camera, so I show him those too.

Again I’m asked, “Why do you do this?”
“It’s a memento.”
“Memento?”
“A souvenir.”

He still doesn’t get it. A young female cop who speaks better English translates for him. I notice there are at least eight officers surrounding me, all very interested in what’s going on.

I suddenly want very badly to leave this place, and it strikes me that I can’t. I’m being held for questioning. The situation is new to me.

The chief starts yelling at the cop who brought me in. It’s all Greek to me, but the tone is clearly along the lines of “Why are you wasting my time with this shit?”

A little more yelling and the chief asks for my passport. This time, I give it up.

One of the cops sits down with me. I can see the sides of his mouth curving upward. “We’re going to let you go.” He winks at me discreetly. “We just need to take down your information.”

He has me write my name, my mother’s name, my father’s name, my passport number, my address, and the name of my hotel in Athens.

I get up to leave. The guy in the leather jacket, still standing by my side and clearly a little embarrassed, tries to justify himself to me. “In other countries, the policies are maybe more…elastic…but here, you must not do these things.”

The police chief asks one more time, “Will you delete this video?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t do that.”
“Okay. Get out of here.”

And that’s my story.

I’ve never had any experience with civil disobedience. I think of myself as a spineless wimp and I guess I imagined I’d fold pretty quickly, so it was nice to learn that I can withstand a little intimidation when the matter at hand is truly ridiculous enough.

I don’t know how I would’ve held up if there’d been anything serious at stake, like life or liberty. This was just about the pursuit of happiness, which trails a distant third.

I wasn’t even going to use it in the video. The lighting’s bad and it’s just not all that interesting. But if I’m willing to go to jail for a thing, I should probably get some use out of it, huh?

Samos, Greece Road to Ephesus

The island of Samos is a few inches from the Turkish mainland. Nevertheless, it’s Greece. There must’ve been a battle for it at some point. If I were Turkey, I’d certainly fight for it. But the Gods favored the Greeks, as they often do.

I must be in Greece, cause I’m eating a ham sandwich. Ham, my belly says “welcome back.”

Samos is just south of Lesbos, home of some influential girl-on-girl poetry.

Samos is east of Santorini, earthquake-prone home to the ancient Minoans and probable origin of the Atlantis myth.

Samos is just north of Patmos, where St. John sat in a cave and produced the Book of Revelations to silence the voices in his head. If only all psychotic missives were afforded such gravity, what a world this would be.

Flew out of Jordan a week ago. I was heading for Istanbul, counting on a connection in Beirut, but the flight wasn’t leaving when I thought it did. I had a night to kill.

Caught a cab into the city. Inevitably, screaming was involved. They never just take you where you want to go. There’s always something. This something had us reversing back up a highway off-ramp.

Beirut is working hard to shed its image as a bombed-out crater and regain its prior image as the Paris of the Middle East. I don’t know if they’ve seen Paris lately, but these days there’s hardly a distinction.

Beirut has obviously changed a lot recently, but it still wears its scars openly.

I’m pretty sure that guy on the right used to have two arms, and I don’t think the bullet holes were an aesthetic decision.

I’d heard much talk of Lebanese cuisine, and my limited domestic exposure has been positive, so I decided to give it a go. I picked a sidewalk restaurant and explained to the waiter that I had only one meal in which to experience his country’s culinary spectrum.

The waiter ordered me one of almost everything on the menu. “Small portions only,” he said, but that message got lost somewhere between my table and the kitchen.

I ate as much as I could fit in my body. I even ate the fries, which I’m pretty sure aren’t a staple part of the cuisine. And don’t think I didn’t pay for it, cause I did. Full price for everything.

It strikes me that this is the sort of thing that makes some tourists wax rhapsodic about the generosity of Lebanese or Bolivians or Mongolians or wherever they happen to be. Not to sound grumpy, but that wasn’t generosity. That was being taken for a ride. That was being stuffed like a turkey and then eaten.

Overcome with guilt for my gluttonous ways, I resolved to work off the meal by walking back to the airport.

The airport in Beirut isn’t much closer than the airport in any other city. It’s not the kind of distance where you go, “I think I’ll walk.” Especially when it’s the middle of the night and you’re carrying 55 pounds of luggage. But I had a 4am flight and some time to kill. And some calories to burn. And I guess I needed to work some stuff out in my head. Walking helps.

Passed this sign.

Kind of a sad acknowledgement of cultural decline.

Istanbul was a welcome change. I spent my first evening eating kebabs at a bustling café in the shadow of the Blue Mosque. It was filled with burly mustachioed men and women playing backgammon and smoking from narghile (hookah) pipes. It felt like part of some elaborate municipal effort to maintain tourist expectations. I had to tap one of them on the shoulder to make sure he wasn’t animatronic. But no, evidently they still get their kicks the way they did a century ago.

I’m certainly not complaining.

Turks are also more willing to cohabitate with tourists in their leisure spaces. Coming from the Middle East, before that Africa, and Asia further still, I’ve been conditioned to accept the vast gulf between visitor and local. Europe, or at least that aspect of Europe, is something I’m ready for.

I slept a lot in Istanbul. First it was recovering from the 4am flight, but I eventually realized I was worn down by much more than that.

Blue Mosque. Nyeh.

Hagia Sophia. Whatever.

One aspect of Europe I’m not looking forward to is all the religious sites. The message never changes: “Look how much we love God!”

Great. Got it. Not interested.

I’m not sure God is, either.

Hey, wow, Sistine Chapel. That’s fantastic, guys. No, really. I’m speechless – totally flattered. Tell me something, though…have you seen the Grand Canyon? Cause I made that. How about Dead Vlei in Namibia? Uh huh. That was me too…Boy, love the tile work. And those frescos. Man, that must’ve taken you forever. This is definitely going on the fridge.

The famous Grand Bazaar is an open market with over 4500 shops. It wasn’t until I got there that I started wondering why that’s a good thing.

This packaging is somewhat alarming.

Turks are very attractive people. Take this politician, for example, who like a young Jack Kennedy, is clearly coasting on his good looks.

Mostly they look the way Americans do in old pictures from back when we had to work for a living. Their skin is made of naugahyde. Their heads are crunched downward as if from years of backbreaking labor. They appear to have all just emerged from a coal mine.

After a couple days of recuperation, I decided to start touring the countryside. First stop: Troy.

Yes, that Troy. Who knew it was in Turkey? Did some research and it’s pretty well accepted that they found it. They don’t publicize the place much – undoubtedly for a reason.

Took a ferry across the Bosphorus. Bus to Bursa. Stuck there for 8 hours waiting for another bus to Chanakkale (lacking the patience to decipher the Turkish alphabet, I’m just going with rough pronunciations). The big surprise there: the Bursa bus station has blazing fast, cheap wi-fi. I pulled down loads of Arrested Development and Sopranos, then caught up on movie trailers.

Am I the only one who thinks the new Superman looks like he sprung out of some gay internet fan fiction? Aberkryptonite & Fitch.

Hey-o! Rimshot!

Arrived at Chanakkale at 5am, found every single hotel booked full by tour groups. One night manager took pity on me and let me sleep on the lobby couch until sunrise.

Made my way onto the Troy minibus. Fell asleep waiting for it to leave. When I woke, there was a guy sitting next to me named Xiao Wei.

Xiao Wei grew up outside of Shanghai. He lives in Germany studying chemistry, and is traveling Turkey by himself. He has a gentle manner. I liked him instantly.

We formed a fellowship. I speak English good, so I could help communicate for him and cut travel costs. In return, he could serve as a combination camera holder/alarm clock.

On display at the entrance to Troy: the actual, original, authentic Trojan horse.

Amazing. And in such good condition!

During the Enlightenment, kings and intellectuals marveled at the shrewd leadership and military bravura of Julius Caesar. Suetonius tells us that Caesar wept with humility before a statue of Alexander the Great. As a boy, Alexander went to bed each night with Aristotle's copy of the lliad under his pillow, longing to one day match the heroic feats of Achilles.

Point being: it doesn’t get much ancienter than Troy. And few legends wear more layers of polish.

There’s not much left of the original site. This is about as close as it comes to an actual, recognizable space.

This is what remains of the Greek-desecrated Temple of Apollo, where Brad Pitt first encountered Eric Bana.

There are at least nine different versions of Troy, built one on top of another over the course of millennia. The name has changed as well. Another of its names was Ilium (hence, Iliad). The Roman numerals at this spot indicate which version you’re looking at, and show how each one was slightly elevated over its previous incarnation.

This makes excavation a very tricky enterprise.

It’s believed that Troy VI was the one sacked by the Greeks. As for it being done over the blinding beauty of the proto-MacGuffin, Helen, no one can say for certain. But as is often the case with this sort of thing, skepticism runs rampant.

Xiao is pretty sure the red flowers are poppies. Another passerby felt confident as well. This may explain why I found it such a pleasant place to visit.

I showed Xiao the new dancing video over lunch at the Troy souvenir complex. He watched in silence, as if I were showing him my driver's license. Afterward, his only comment was that it would be a nice thing to have 10 years from now.

At first my ego was a little bruised. But on reflection, I suppose his mind went straight to the most important part.

Back into town, Xiao led me to a hostel with dorm beds available. I slept through the afternoon, then we left to catch the overnight bus to Ephesus.

Incidentally, the WWI battlefield of Gallipoli is just across the Dardanelles, maybe an hour's drive and a short ferry ride from Troy.

The Turks sure know how to repel a beachhead.

Dumped yet again at 5 in the morning, this time in the city of Izmir, which some claim to be the birthplace of Homer. Again, who knew he was a Turk? These days it’s a concrete, industrial wasteland.

Another hour by bus to Selchuk. Found another hotel. Got more badly-needed sleep.

Walked to Ephesus in the afternoon. Much more impressive than Troy.

In the amphitheater, a plump Bavarian couple took center stage and sung a duet of Amazing Grace, dazzling us with the unexpected acoustic resonance.

“Germans,” said Xiao Wei, a knowing weariness in his voice.

And onward to the main attraction: the façade of the Celsus Library.

It had to be reassembled block by block from the rubble. A couple thousand years of earthquakes left a lot of damage. They've done an amazing job putting it back together.

We continued past the tourist throngs, eventually finding the quiet, somewhat haunting road to Ephesus.

As I’ve grumbled before, I’ll take a few haphazard chunks of column over the big spectacle if it means I can see it on my own, without any guides explaining how it was put together; scaring away that intangible quality that transports us to another when, breaking the spell, ruining the ruins.

Xiao Wei and I had planned to rent a car and drive inland to see the weird frosted pools of Pammukale. After Ephesus, I had a change of heart and just wanted the extra day in Greece. We parted ways early the next morning and I caught the ferry to Samos.

The Athens ferry is getting ready to depart, so time to finish this up.

I’m loosely retracing the path of Ulysses. Seems appropriate.

Frankly, I don’t know what Homer was making such a big deal about. This is easy.