...so quintessentially contemporary American?
i'm sitting in a coffee shop, in the ground floor of my grandmother's apartment building which happens to be a 45+ storey skyscraper, listening to Bob Dylan over the sound system, drinking a cappucino from a paper cup with a cardboard heat protector wrapped around it, using their free wi-fi connection on my laptop to write a post in my blog, read magazine articles and e-mail my friends half a world away regarding business, tv shows and politics.
i've been in the states for just under 1 week now.
it's been a relaxing week, even if i did (temporarily) sit next to one of the most obnoxious, intrusive, and rude older italian couples on the plane from Amsterdam to Minneapolis-St. Paul. their (in particular her) excessive nosiness and disrespect of my personal space was balanced out by a very cool french man who sat on the opposite side of me for the short time i had the unpleasant luck to be sitting there. thankfully, i was able to move to a seat surrounded by two empty seats almost immediately upon take-off. and i got 1000 frequent flier miles to boot!
regardless of that event, it's been a relaxing week, even if i did spend the past five days at the gym, kicking myself into shape. i only wish that i could continue it. you see, my brother gave me a 5-day pass to his gym, so we made the most of it and went every day that it was valid for. but tomorrow, he's going to San Jose/Oakland to work and the pass will be invalid - two reasons why it can't continue.
regardless of the fact that my body is a little sore right now, it's been a relaxing week, even if i've been stuffing my face since i landed, more or less. thanksgiving dinner was spectacular because, not only was the food good, but the gathering of my extended stateside family is always a lot of fun. it's great being able to chat with relatives who one sees once in a blue moon. it's also great when little details surprise you and you learn things you thought to be impossible.
so now i'm gearing up for my first real week in the states - a week wherein i hope to solve many problems and do much work related to getting my (our, really) business off the ground in Prague.
i'm a little worried that i might not be able to sell my dvds as quickly as i'd like. i'm also a little worried that i won't be able to sell my car. the dvds are not so important, but the car is. according to Kelly Blue Book, my car is worth somewhere around $9,910 but that's not exact because i don't know the exact mileage.
anyway, it will be an interesting next few weeks...
i haven't been in the states in almost a year. i left just before 2005 actually rolled in.
people in the past week or two have been noticing that i'm more animated and relaxed and comfortable and excited. there are many reasons for that.
this trip home really has the pretext of business. sure, i'll be seeing more long-time friends than i think i ever have on this return journey. that makes me happy and excited. another thing, obviously, is my family - some of whom i haven't seen for a similar time period. yet another thing is that i'm really, truly, deeply excited and ecstatic that i actually have a solid goal to aim for in the near future - starting the business with my czech partner.
that said, i'm looking forward to seeing many of the people who read this blog. which brings me to my schedule: if i haven't contacted you about getting together, then i'm stupid, but you should get in touch...
here it is:
Nov. 21st-Nov. 30th: Minneapolis-St. Paul area
Nov. 30th-Dec. 11th: Bloomington, IN area
Dec. 11th-Dec. 18th: San Jose, San Francisco and Los Angeles areas
Dec. 18th-Dec. 23rd: Bloomington, IN area
Dec. 23rd-Dec. 27th: WI shoreline w/ family
Dec. 27th-Dec. 28th: MSP area
Dec. 28th-Jan. 1st: Chicago area
Jan. 1st-Jan. 6th: Bloomington, IN area
Jan. 7th-Jan. 11th: MSP area
the only anomaly is the Chicago trip. it might be condensed, with the additional days probably swinging to the MSP area before New Year's.
so, if i haven't been in touch, i should've and i apologize. drop me a line, foo'!
it's inevitable, with time, consumer patterns change.
and you're hearing it from me now, the future is online. ha. old news, you say.
yes and no.
what i'm referring to is the decline of a material consumer impulse in things relating to entertainment.
there will emerge a point, and i don't actually forsee it happening for at least a decade or three, where the desire to actually have a physical representation of a given media will be an impulse of a minority.
what do i mean? i mean that those people, including myself, who have always enjoyed the ostentatious display of entertainment preferences will change their consumption patterns.
it's obvious now and i'm sure i'm not the first person to be of this opinion. iTunes is a HUGE money generator for Apple. it's an indication of the future.
earlier in my life (and by earlier in my life i even mean earlier this year), i was adamant about having the official copy of a cd - i wanted the hard copy because i thought it would look good on a shelf next to my other hundreds of cds. i wanted it because it was not going to fail me. i took good care of it. and i had this image in my mind of eventually being wealthy enough to have a flat or a house with a big library where i could actually line up a cd collection 1000-strong side by side without stacking in any awkward way and show off my collection. but then i reduced my cd collection to binders for ease of transit to college or whatever land, foreign or otherwise, to which i might like to take them. so already my dream of a big library was crumbling.
then there is my dvd collection. a collection which is relegated to collecting dust as i am over here in Prague. a collection that is probably around 500 titles strong and which i refuse to put in the same type of binders as my cds because the binders are known to be more aggressive towards damaging the discs. so they remain in their plastic cases, side by side, on shelves in my home.
i've been anal about organizing and maintaining these two collections too. it's a complicated system, depending on the medium in question, of either genres then artists then albums (cds) or of studios then titles then even production years if necessary (dvds) - an organization system only truly clear in my head. why are the Beatles rock and the Sex Pistols too but not Madonna? well, that's all in my head.
and that is how i've operated for a long time.
but in the past three months, my mind has undergone a fundamental shift in mentality. i no longer need these concrete offerings. i don't need the plastics of cds. for one thing, this will be much kinder to the environment. no longer will i be shedding three layers of plastic into a landfill just for new music.
i started using iTunes and it's a blessing. and it's the most obvious example of the future. look at the enormous burden that my generation is putting on both the music and film industries by illegal file sharing. these people swapping files do not care about the hard copy, they just want the product. most of these people are also around my age or younger. when my generation is "in power" (as in "hits middle age"), cd sales (which are already biting the dust) will be non-existent and dvd sales too.
dvds are archaic already. for one thing, Sony is destined to come out on top for the next generation technology, that of blu-ray dvd. but dvds, by the time blu-ray dvds are available to be marketed, will already be crippled by the availability of downloadable copies. look at what each of the TV stations and film companies are doing now. first ABC starts offering episodes of Lost and Desperate Housewives on iTunes for $1.99 a pop. now NBC and CBS are moving to get their programs online.
they aren't moving to just put current shows online. Warner Bros TV has just announced that it will be offering hundreds of old TV shows online on the website In2TV. these include many shows that are undergoing a stage of renewed interest thanks to high level sales of DVD season-by-season sets.
CBS is about to offer an exclusive, online only scene of CSI: Miami that will initiate a subplot that will be resolved only in the season finale. an extra scene? isn't that the sort of thing we expect from a dvd?
speaking of dvds, i'm still not finished with blu-ray dvds. by the time blu-ray dvd players have saturated the market, the bottom will have fallen out of the official market. fewer people will be buying studio-sanctioned hard copies with nice inserts and nice packaging than will be downloading them online. blu-ray dvds will still be important though because, even though people will be downloading films legally, the storage capacity of their computers will be filled quite quickly unless they can unload these space-eating files. this is where blu-ray dvds will come in - storage. dvds were created to increase storage capacity of disc technology and there they shall remain.
but that's not really why i started this post. this is all technology talk. what is more important, however, is the shift in consumer mentality. and that is the biggest change that will happen. sure, the mediums will change, but the consumer mentality towards music and movies and tv shows will fundamentally change.
there ya go. it's shifting people. my mentality shifted in only the past few weeks. i've downloaded quite a bit off of iTunes and i don't think i'll ever not download an album if it's available. unfortunately, it is still impossible to purchase some artists' music as downloads - one of my favorite groups, Radiohead, a group which i normally associate with being cutting edge still has not released their music for legal download (at least not on iTunes).
regardless, i'm not going to buy another cd if i can help it. for one thing, it helps the environment. for another, cds and dvds are moving to the same space as my hard drive - they're the shelf for the content, not the content itself. so don't be surprised when the ostentatious display of racks of cds and dvds is replaced by ostentatious display of the technology that surrounds these things.
so, having said all of that, anybody want to buy some dvds?
i spent a late night on monday night, from which i'm still recovering. it was a pleasant, nostalgic night when the wind shifted. the air changed.
i went to sleep at 6 a.m. on Tuesday morning and woke up at 11 a.m. yesterday (also Tuesday, whaddayaknow). that late night really screwed my schedule beyond normal. i'm still not fully recovered, as i said. i woke up at 11 today but i felt like i could've slept until tomorrow.
but i wouldn't have changed a thing. i would not.
i stayed in town until about 5:15 or so. i say "in town" because i live a short distance outside of Prague and "town" to me implies where my friends live and the center of the city, more or less. anyway, i was in town that night to honor a friend.
my friend, nick, has moved to chicago. i'll be seeing him soon, over my two month stint in the states. he left on Tuesday morning. that doesn't mean that the twinge of "something's missing" isn't there. on the contrary, i walked by the building where his flat was only 6 or so hours after he had stepped on the plane, and i still felt weird. already nostalgic.
nick is an excellent individual and he is already missed by many in Prague. i had only recently really got to know Nick in any close way, but he is already a close friend and will be, no doubt, a close friend for the rest of our lives.
nick was effusive and probably overgenerous in praising his friends (by friends, i mean myself primarily) on his way out the door. he proclaimed his friends here to all be excellent people and i can only but echo somebody else's comment: it is only a reflection upon the individual what type of friendships one maintains.
nick, you are truly an excellent and generous individual. qualities which can be lost and obscured in a modern world. i'm thankful to have ever had the luxury of living in the same city as you and we will stay in touch.
so, having left him out of my earlier post:
thank you to nick, for being a great person and an even greater friend. best of luck in chicago - you will be missed in prague, but i'll see you soon!
it's not really day 9 any longer. it's much farther along. there is no plan or work on a plan yet. because it's an all new ball game.
so, i'm staying in Praha. as i was telling a friend about my idea for a website, he hooked onto a small part of the idea that i had yet to seriously consider... a real world function.
this friend liked the idea so much that we are now business partners. we're working on setting up a company and despite the fact that i will be back in the states for two months, it won't be a lazy two months as my time in the U.S. usually is. i have many things to do relating to this business.
first and foremost, we need to acquire the capital. the start up costs for this company will be much smaller than what i was perceiving would have been the start up costs for the website. small enough that between the two of us, we can start it up fairly easily with only minimal bank loans.
so, when i am in the states, i'm going to sell my car. i offered it to my dad and he seemed interested, but i need the capital from the car so he'll either have to sell his other cars and give me some of that money or i'm going to sell my car. i actually spent my own (inherited) money to buy the car initially, so it is mine to sell... even though it is registered in both my father's and my names.
anybody wanna buy a '99 Honda Civic with low miles and great gas mileage? heh heh...
i also don't need my dvds any longer. anybody wanna buy some dvds? most of 'em are unwatched or watched once, so they're in excellent condition.
i also need to contact certain U.S. companies regarding their products, cross-marketing, etc etc.
so, we'll see. it's proving to be a great learning experience so far. plus, having a business partner is keeping me motivated because we're both driven, but i get lazy if i'm working alone. having the responsibility of keeping my share of the partnership going keeps me moving at a higher speed - this is definitely a good thing.
i have completely updated my Ron Matus trip photo page.
it's a weird story how the trip came about.
i have a friend (we'll call her "E") here who works at the school that i used to work for and she is from Iowa. her boyfriend ("M"), at that time, worked in a pub. E had given M an Iowa State sweatshirt as a gift and he happened to be wearing it one night when he was working.
a man, Ron Matus, walked into M's pub and, upon seeing M's sweatshirt, said "I'm from Iowa." M directed Ron to E, since she was the origin of the sweatshirt. Ron and E started talking and it turned out that Ron's grandfather had immigrated to the U.S. from what is now the Czech Republic. so, having long held ambitions to see his ancestral hometown, Ron finally bought a ticket to visit the Czech Republic.
the thing was that he didn't want to drive all over the Czech Republic. he wanted some help and company. so at first he asked E and M and he told them that he would take care of their hotel, food and transport bills... but unfortunately, neither could help because they both had to work. E directed him to me, since i was and still am working on a business plan but otherwise free.
i met him and he said that he wanted to go for about a week. unfortunately, i did not have the time to spend that long on the road with him. but we did agree to three days on the road. i agreed to go on Friday evening...
on Sunday evening i realized that earlier that week i had agreed to go to a dinner party for my friend and his girlfriend who was visiting from the states.
so on Monday, i went to his hotel and we picked up a rental car and drove to Kutna Hora, which is about 80km E of Prague. we would use Kutna Hora as a base of operation for our trip.
Monday afternoon we walked around KH a bit (see photos), before i hopped a train back to Prague. that's right, i returned to Prague for the dinner party. but i also caught a train back to KH late that night.
the next day was the big day for Ron - it was the day where we would find Bily Kun, his ancestral hometown. we embarked mid-morning and i got a little lost quite quickly before setting us on the right course.
we stopped in Luze, a small town which we knew to be near Bily Kun and asked somebody for directions. we were on the right track.
we continued to Bily Kun, which was a small village with a long-closed pub and a very small general store that was open for two hours about every other day of the week. it was an off-day.
we drove around a bit. we tried to talk to a (very bored) young teenager who kept cruising around the village on his moto to find out if anybody in the town had the last name Matus. the teenager rattled off sentence after sentence in Czech and i could only catch bare snippets. i kept saying that i spoke very little Czech and he kept rattling off long phrases. it became apparent pretty quickly that the effort to communicate was in vain, since the teenager didn't speak any English.
we drove around the countryside surrounding Bily Kun a little bit before heading back to Luze, where we looked around a cemetary and a (closed) castle before snagging a quick drink.
we stopped in a few other towns on our way back to Kutna Hora, but only for a few moments in each place. that night we grabbed dinner in the hotel and a desert in a local cafe. i went on an hour long walk by myself after Ron went to bed. (that is where the night photos come from.)
the next (and final full) day, Ron was game to go and do anything. he left it up to me. i had been reading a Czech and Slovak Republics guidebook during the entire trip in my downtime as unofficial tour guide and i suggested a local castle.
so we drove to Kacina, which was beautiful, but the tours were long and only in Czech, which deterred us away from the interior tour. as that had only killed a little time, i suggested Telc, which was a favorite place for the guidebook authors. it would be a longer drive than any we had done yet, but that didn't matter. we were both curious to see it.
we started the drive. the countryside we drove through reminded us both very much of the Midwest and Wisconsin in particular. this triggered the nostalgia in Ron and he began to relate many excellent biographical stories. my personal favorite being the time when he hung a 40'x10' sign on his bar in Cedar Rapids saying "Impeach Nixon" in big letters (and the "x" in "Nixon" was made into a swastika). apparently the mayor of Cedar Rapids didn't take too kindly to it. heh heh.
i wish i had taken some photos of the countryside, because it was fantastic, autumnal colors and all.
when we arrived in Telc, we walked around the Central Square and explored the Palace a bit before going shopping. Ron had been looking for a good place to buy gifts for his friends and family back home and Prague is a commercially-laden tourist nightmare. way too many tourists and prices 20 to 50% more than anywhere else in the country.
after shopping, we grabbed a drink before driving back to Kutna Hora for dinner.
again, after Ron went to bed, i walked around the town for awhile. it's a very romantic setting and i could feel the history as i walked down tiny, winding cobblestone streets lined with old houses.
the next day we left early-ish in order to get back to Prague and return the rental car by 11, which we did with 5 minutes to spare.
warning, a probably sappy post to follow...
i realize this is about a bit premature, but the right words being said at the right time on top of the excellent, relaxed night i had tonight make me want and need to say this: thank you to all of my friends.
i'm incredibly thankful for my family (words would not suffice) but i want to single out my friends for this post. i've had the luck to stumble into the right friendships at the right times in my life and i am completely enriched by everybody i've ever been able to call a friend.
i have friendships with people i've known since i was 3 or 4. i also have friendships that are really only a few months old but they function at a level of generosity and caring that i've never really considered. it's not that i didn't have them before, but i think i've finally reached a point where i can legitimately reflect upon the friendship in question - and i can say in every instance that my friends have always been the right choice.
in the end, i just wanted to post a note of thanks. this list will inevitably fall short. there will inevitably be people missing and i apologize. heck, if you feel like you should be on this list, let me know. if you won't hold it against me, i won't hold it against you for letting me know! ;-)
thank you to adam, who i've known since i was terribly young (and he was not-so-terribly younger).
thank you to daniel, who i've known just about equally as long.
thank you to lig, who i knew before i knew her and whom is still a valuable source of information and friendship.
thank you to paco, who first taught me that people experience things differently. even though you didn't do it directly and it was only in hindsight, i understand now that our house was not what you expected. i'm grateful to you and your family for your humble and always-open household. muchisimas gracias!
thank you to the second adam, who is an all around intelligent and superb individual and who has made the commitment to marry an equally as intelligent and superb individual. may you populate the world with little intelligent and superb individuals.
thank you to ernie, who despite the fact i never really hung out with all that much in college remains a good friend nevertheless.
thank you to jen and bear, who are also intelligent and superb individuals and who make coupling an ideal.
thank you to zdanna, who always teased me for "falling asleep" at her concerts. she knows it was moreover that i was being lulled into a trance-like state.
thank you to evan, whose bone dry sense of humor prepared me for what i know now.
thank you to nonoko, who was the first to actually make me feel attractive. i know it's a weird thing to say, but it's true.
thank you to my fellow r.a.'s at carleton, our r.a. community was tighter than most and i think it was in no small part due to our individual respect for each other.
thank you to mike "rudy" rollins, my limited-time cohost and fellow rude boy. i wouldn't have survived the cutthroat world of college radio without you.
thank you to katie f, whose immense intelligence and grounding in reality demands enormous respect (and she should expect no less).
thank you to carol and john, professors and friends. they too deserve respect. they generally love their subjects and that's what makes them good teachers. i'm lucky to have been allowed to major in their field.
thank you to marc, who is still a connection to my year in LA and who treated me as a friend while simultaneously teaching me as a boss should. and who is still helping me with the occasional nugget of information or assistance.
thank you to barrie, who is the only reason i ever found a job in LA and who took the time to have coffee with me. it was an honor and a priviledge.
thank you to mitch and jim, two utterly fantastic individuals who completed my stay in LA. without them, life would've been much less friendly there. and, get this, i never really hung out with them outside of work. hopefully, someday, we can get together and catch up.
thank you to ellis and the rest of his family, who provided a home away from home and friends away from friends. i probably would've lasted only half the time in LA without them.
thank you to dave and gabi, who put me up in their house for a few weeks when i was fresh off the boat. the influence that stay had is probably what made me last this long and want to stay longer here in prague.
thank you to cyn, you bitch. i hate you. relationships require commitment. :p seriously though, she's the one who touched off this whole post when she told me, and i quote, "you suck." oh, and she also said "but i love you anyway mf".
thank you to jana, whose curiosity is beyond admiration. she gave me a book for my birthday which she thought i would like based on my past history of reading and thanks to her i have a new coaster. i'm kidding, of course. the book is wonderful but could use a few less words - c.s. lewis was a windbag of sorts, in my opinion, and it's taking a little patience to get through an otherwise excellent book. regardless, thanks to jana and her good judgment, i'm reading a book i would never otherwise read.
thank you to the fujaci, my closest circle of friends here.
thank you to the rest of my growing group of prague friends, who have given me a home and a community. i love it here and i'm glad i've found a reason to stay.
thank you to everybody i've forgotten to mention specifically.
***
i used to have a beach towel when i was younger that had a big blue monster on it and which read "mr. personality". i think "mr. perspicacity" might be more appropriate. i've been a good judge so far and the evidence can be found in the high quality of the people who surround - the people to whom i owe an enormous debt. friends and family create an individual and that is where i find myself now, wondering how i ever befriended such wonderful and welcoming people.
thank you to all my friends.