back in Reno

Buenos Aires was cool -- really cool. My room and my housemates were awesome. But I was sort of out of steam. Then my mom called and left me a message asking, even though she knew that I wasn't planning on it, "aren't you coming home for Christmas?"

I got to thinking that the best possible thing to do at this point was to go back to Reno, see my family and old friends who would all be back in town for the holidaze, recharge, work, go see the taxman who recently made a personal appearance in my place of business (!), and get some work done. Then maybe I could head back out in January. I could also look for and reserve a place for the big fuckin party I plan to throw to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Sticker Guy! in March.

So here I am in Reno. I surprised the shit out of my mom (but didn't give her a heart attack after the taxi driver, who was also a mother, warned me that she would think she was seeing ghosts), went out and saw old friends at the bar (and almost got into a fight with a really stupid fucking kid), and just slept 14 hours. Now I guess I should go to work.

First I'll say a little about my ten days in Buenos Aires. 15 million people, big fuckin' city. I had a really hard time orienting myself for some reason (usually I'm pretty good at that). I found a GREAT color lab to develop my weird outdated professional 120mm slide film rolls (I'll eventually post the pix to my flickr page www.flickr.com/photos/menchetti). I met Pirulo, owner of Rastrillo Records, and his girlfriend Vanesa, who had me over to their house for an asado (all Argentinians eat is meat, it seems). They were super cool and so were all their friends. I saw LOS PEYOTES in their hometown -- they were great, though they didn't blow my mind as much as the first time at the Funtastic in Spain (but there were other reasons my mind was blown there). I met Nico and saw his band MOTORAMA, who played with the SICK SICK SINNERS, a psychobilly band from Brazil who I also saw at the Goiania festival and walkin' down the street in their hometown of Curitiba. I had sort of made fun of them because they have that haircut and all the tattoos and talk in these corny psychobilly voices on stage  -- but they were extremely cool guys and I actually got to like their band a bit the last time I saw them, when the sound was exceptionally clear (and apparently somehow they got the message because they spoke in a normal voice between songs).

I walked around BA a ton and biked some too. It's definitely worth a visit, but plan on partying all night and doing some shopping by day, because there ain't much to do to cool off -- no beaches or anything like that, and the river is ridiculously polluted. I snapped a picture of a shoe and a dead animal of some sorts floating in the brown water.

I really dug the Argentinians and their Spanish accent is the coolest sounding that I've heard. It's got a real singsong rhythm -- the millions of Italian immigrants in the 20th century definitely left their mark. They even say "que cosa?", which is 100% Italiano. They also say "vos" instead of "tu" (you) which must be some sort of Portuguese (from você) influence?

A multi-city ticket was less than half of what a oneway ticket would have cost me (and also cheaper than a roundtrip, for some reason) -- so on the 9th of January I have the option to fly back down south to San Jose, Costa Rica. I think I'll bust my ass and get my work done so I can do that. It's cold here. Then I can continue my South American trip, heading south again, but this time on the west side through Colombia, Peru, Chile, etc.

Oh yeah -- and since both my mom and my dad told me they read this blog I have officially changed my mind and don't feel like a total geek writing it. So there.