A summer survival guide

Film purists will tell you that the optimal movie watching experience is on the biggest screen imaginable with the newest Dolby audio design, comfiest chairs and in complete silence. These people are wrong. It's sort of like asking audiophiles on what the best way to listen to music is; they'd tell you about their incredibly expensive setup with their best-in-class noise cancelling headphones and lossless file format, but for most people the best music listening experience would be popping up a vinyl on a $200 record player, some cozy lighting and a drink.

For me, the summer season is the perfect time to watch movies no matter how suboptimal it may be. Open air theatres start popping up everywhere (in Athens, at least)/, and if you can ignore the mosquitos, humidity and mild discomfort, it enhances the movie watching experience tenfold. Hell, even watching a movie in an air-conditioned room at home while the sun is burning at a blistering 40 degrees, beer in hand and snacks all over the couch, sounds like a dream right now. I might be contradicting my 22 year-old self who thought that watching a movie should be like work, but my 22 year-old self was a dumbass. My 29 year old self is still a dumbass, but at least he knows that it's not that deep, watching movies should be fun and I couldn't care less if someone wants to watch "Lost Highway" on their 5" cracked iPhone 10 screen. That being said, I have some specific recommendations for movies and series that are perfect for this summer season, whether you're watching at home or at a fancy open air cinema overlooking the Acropolis.

Do the right thing

This is basically what prompted me to make this list, I've never seen a movie so accurately display the summer heat before this one, and it's a really fun one before shit hits the fan. Amazing depiction of how quick things can escalate and a very important movie showcasing the division even between minorities, and it will stick with you like a sweat-soaked t-shirt long after you've finished watching it.

Before Trilogy

I don't know if it's cheating to put a trilogy in here but I'm making the rules up as I go so it doesn't really matter. Spoilers: it won't be Linklaters only appearance on the list, the dude basically creates movies made to be seen in a cozy afternoon with a bottle of wine and a date, if applicable. There's not much more to say about these movies that hasn't been said before, it's my favourite depiction of a fairytale relationship with a turn to realism in the 3rd part, which is as beautiful as it is brutal.

I'm gonna go ahead and plagiarize myself from a previous review I did: The first movie is that one-in-a-million romance that ends in a what could have been, the kind of story that could have been a cliche if not for the natural performances of Delpy and Hawke, who I was devasted to learn weren't a couple. Hawke did give us Maya Hawke with now ex-wife Uma Thurman however, so I'll give him a pass. It's a great movie on its own, but it's elevated by being part of this trilogy.

Before Sunset is basically one in a million times two, which I guess would have made it one in two million? Basically the where the "what could have been" is resolved in the most romantic, least cheesy way, with a "baby, you're gonna miss that plane" and a content Hawke charming it up with a cool "I know", one of my favourite final scenes in movies, ever. 

Before midnight is the epilogue that gives us a reality check that we most desperately need, it's the movie equivalent of getting hit in the nuts with a bat. It gives us the depressing reality of a crumbling relationship that makes you understand that even fairytale romances will suffer from time's unavoidable touch. And we love it for that.

Dazed and Confused/Everybody Wants Some!!

As I said, more Linklater on the way. These two are meant to be watched back-to-back, as the original and spiritual successor which hit the same notes but for different parts of your life. Better enjoyed with a group of friends who don't mind watching people just going about their day, snappy dialogue and 70's/80's nostalgia included. The first one depicts the last day of highschool in a typical suburban town and the second one the last few days before the semester starts for a few freshmen who just joined their collage baseball team.

Dazed and Confused features a stacked by today's standards cast in roles you wouldn't expect them in, and Matthew McConaughey in one of his coolest roles, delivering some of the most iconic (albeit a bit creepy) lines in history. It's about the dread and excitement of growing up, it's about friendship, it's about having fun, it's about life, really.

On the other hand, Everybody Wants Some follows a whole different set of dudes who all want to party, drink beer and get laid in typical frat boy fashion. But reading between the lines of some teammates trying to compete with each other and one-up each other in every way possible, you can see a bunch of guys who have no idea what to do in their life and are just excited about what is yet to come. In between the partying and drinking and dancing, there's also using these formative years as a means to discover who you are, who you want to be and what you want to make of yourself. But, y'know, there's gotta be partying as well. Also Glen Powell is in this and he's fucking hilarious, if you needed more convincing.

Sharp Objects

This list was supposed to be about movies, but I couldn't let this one out. This mini-series is sweaty, dark, brutal and not at all like the movies I mentioned above. It won't make you feel good, it will make you gasp and cry and you might need to collect your jaw from the floor after it ends. It's based on a fantastic book by the brilliant Gillian Flynn, and it's a study of generational trauma and the cycle of abuse, disguised as a crime story about a fucked up journalist trying to uncover a series of murders in a small suburban town.

You can watch it in a couple of days and I couldn't think of a better way other than doing so in a breezy July afternoon. It's not an easy watch whatsoever, but it's a beautiful series with a fantastic soundtrack and it will make perfect sense why I included it in this list once you see it. Don't skip on the post-credits scene in the last episode because it's probably one of the most important scenes in the series.

    

Stray

Since we're already off the rails in this list I figured I'll include a video game as well. Well this is no ordinary video game, this is set in a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk-ish underground city which is inhabited by mostly benevolent robots. You go around solving puzzles, helping the robots and trying to find your way back home while creating all sorts of mayhem on the way. Oh and you play as a cat, and it's as cute as you would think. 

The Nice Guys

OK we're back to movies, I saw this on the actual open air movie cinema overlooking the Acropolis when it came out, and it's still one of my most memorable movie-going experiences ever. I think of this as the yin to "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang"s yang, this is as much a perfect summer movie as the other is a Christmas movie. Ryan Gosling and Russel Crowe in a film-noir/black comedy written and directed by Shane Black? Come on.

In the mood for love

Enough of the breezy, funny, easy to watch romps I mentioned before. If you want to watch one of the sexiest and yet most tragically romantic movies ever made, this is for you. The colours are immaculate, the performances are amazing and it features some of the most most subtle editing choices with shots that linger just enough to break your hea

rt just a little bit more by the second. Also a movie that makes smoking look so fucking cool. And since we're talking about smoking...

Cheap Smokes

If these things apply to you:

• Spent a lot of summers in Athens by yourself
• Enjoys a bit of pretentiousness in their movies
• Doesn't mind Haralambidis being a cheap Woody Allen knock-off
• Thinks smoking is cool

Then this is the movie for you.

For better or worse all of the above apply to me so I love this movie, and I'm not ashamed to say so. It's a movie made in the 00's that looks like it was made in the 90's, and it's so unabashedly campy that it becomes kind of endearing.

Y tu mama tambien

I talked about how In the mood for love is the sexiest movie ever, but this could be a close second. It's got two best friends on a road trip with an older woman, exploring their sexuality and fighting over her affections, it's grounded and human and very much focuses more on the characters and their relationships rather than the plot. 

The kings of summer/The way way back/The edge of Seventeen/Perks of being a Wallflower/Me and Earl & the dying girl/Looking for Alaska

Here's a lightning round of what I would call "melodramatic, bittersweet, coming-of-age" films, they all deal with similar themes but in their own unique way. Some of these lean into comedy, some of these into drama, all of them explore the dynamics of growing up and figuring stuff about yourself. Wouldn't recommend watching them all together, but they can be staggered in between some of the other ones if you're not "In the mood for love" but rather in the mood for some teenage angst. I snuck in Looking for Alaska as the only other series in the list because it fits the bill perfectly, and because I think it's just better than John Green's other young-adult adaptation in "The fault in their stars".

Stand by me

I was gonna lump this one with all the other ones above, but I think it was just a click above the rest. If you had those childhood friends who you used to hang out with in the summers but fell out of touch for one reason or another, this will hit the right spots. If not, it will still tug at your heartstrings all the same. You will see why River Phoenix is one of the biggest "what ifs", he could have had an incredible career if not dying so young. The sense of comradery between the kids with a very simple story that focuses on the journey rather than the destination, and a classic for a reason. The final line is a gut punch of the highest order, bittersweet and raw and emotional in all the right ways.

There's still a bunch of stuff I could have mentioned here but just to spice things up, here's an extra list of albums that would be perfect to play in the summer.

• Nas - Illmatic
• A tribe called quest - The low end theory
• Gorillaz - Plastic Beach
• AIR - Moon Safari
• Anathema - A natural disaster
• Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
• Frank Ocean - Channel Orange
• Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV
• Kendrick Lamar - Good kid MAAD city
• Childish Gambino - Awaken, my love
• Mac Miller - Swimming
• Mac DeMarco - Salad Days
• King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - Laminated denim

Blog no.31 - Don't Panic

 A couple years ago I visited my father's really, impossibly remote village on the boarder with Turkey and Bulgaria, former home of my late grandparents, and place where I frequently summered when I was little. A sense of excitement and fear overcame me as we approached, both of which eventually gave way to a sort of topical melancholy that imbues the barren-from-people Northern Greece countryside, once we finally arrived. It was exactly as I remembered it, but at the same time it was nothing like it at all. 

  Everything seemed to be in its right place, the layout was the same, the location of the house was the same, with the only glaring omission being the cut down walnut tree that used to tower all over the yard and served as a seasonal swing once you hung a rope and an old car wheel on it. Outside, the whole place was overridden by wild vegetation, and the inside became something like a housing project for an assortment of spiders, flies, wasps and occasionally, small lizards. The biggest change of all however, was the fact that the people who used to live there now don't. I guess the new tiny tenants made sense in a way, life always finds a way to fill the gaps. It had been fifteen years since I last visited the place, but my memories of the last time I was there were still quite vivid.

  I remembered pulling onto the entrance all that time ago and having my grandpa welcome us with a big smile across his face, and my always grumpy but equally loving grandma hugging us one by one to the point of asphyxiation. They would then sit us down by the big walnut tree and stuff our faces with various fruits and vegetables from the yard, or fresh fried eggs from their free roaming chickens. I remembered sitting next to my grandpa while he was driving his tractor, and then sitting on his lap trying to generate enough force to change the gear on that heavy-ass gearbox. I remembered going to the nearby river with the whole family, catching a ton of river fish and decorating small tree branches with them as if they were fish-shaped Christmas tree ornaments, in order to be able to carry them back home and feed both ourselves and the local kittens, who seemed to enjoy the river fish way more than we did. I remembered snapping shots of said kittens with my then new, now lost, digital camera, and then taking a rusty old bike on long rides with the other grandparent-visiting kids in the village. I would get back to the house by the evening, spend a few hours reading Harry Potter and playing on my brother's PSP (which I can now confess that I did, in fact, break), and waiting until it's time to hit the village square to drink some Coke, eat some pork skewers and play hide-and-seek with my friends. It was a nice, simple, boring routine, but I did love doing it.

 Visiting after all these years was nothing like that. When I last visited, I was a short, thin, feisty little kid with ambitions of becoming a football player (even though I sucked loads) or making video games or drawing comic books or whatever little boys used to obsess about back then. I think I might have visited during my "wanting to become a comic book artist" phase, due to carrying a bunch of semi-ripped apart Asterix & Obelix and Lucky Luke comics with me, gifts from my Greek cousins. In that admittedly brief but quite interesting phase, I was obsessed with comics and comic strips, I even did a whole ass presentation on comics, complete with a very professional interview with a guy who was at the time doing political satire for a local newspaper, and a PowerPoint on why politics would be more interesting if presented in comic book fashion. In retrospect, even though I didn't think it through, I have to give it to little me for comparing then prominent political figures to Porky Pig and Bugs Bunny. It's just objectively funny. In case you haven't noticed, I didn't become a football player (although I did stop sucking eventually), I didn't become a video game designer and the attempt I made in creating comic book characters was met with the kind of shock and awe that only your parents can give you when they think "this shit kinda sucks". In my defense, it's really hard to actually do what you think you'll be doing when you're ten. Hell it's hard to even know what you want to do at twenty. Or thirty. Or ever for that matter. 

 Despite all that, I was still content with the version of myself that showed up, as it was, up to that point, the best one so far. The village felt weirdly empty and I just wasn't sure if it was because everything felt bigger when I could barely qualify for the "have to be this tall to ride" slides, or if people just stopped visiting. The streets seemed narrower, the village square seemed smaller and not quite as loud, the one tavern that was left had us as the lonesome guests. Yet, I didn't feel the kind of sadness when you feel you've lost something, or the longing that you feel when you get hit by a wave of nostalgia, I felt something more akin to having finished a really good book. When you're reading the final few remarks, and you flip through the pages yearning for an additional bit of story, but there is none; this is it. Going back felt like closing the cover and putting the book back on the bookshelf. 

 Back in that tavern I felt the need, for the first time in my life, to smoke a cigarette in front of my parents. It's quite odd since I was 27, but it was kind of a breakthrough for me. It wasn't a sad or lonely cigarette, it was one that just made sense. Last couple of days in my dad's village I haven't visited for 15 years, being by far the youngest of the adults that were present. Yeah, a smoke break made sense. I lit it up away from the table, both to not upset my parents and to just get away for a bit and take it all in, the emptiness of the village tends to accentuate everything else. The silence - cricket concerto aside - was deafening. The sky looked as starry as ever. What I appreciate in these small patches of civilization is the relative lack of light pollution, even going a couple of meters away from the central square you could distinguish constellations you wouldn't even dream of in the city. During that short smoke break I just appreciated all the memories that were attached with this place, the games with the other kids, the river swims, the goddamn mosquitos, everything. It was a chapter of my life I'd forgotten about, and one I was glad to revisit.

  It's actually not that bad going back to places you've forgotten about or ones that fill you with nostalgia, it's quite comforting really. You've already read that book, but you can now appreciate how it felt to read all those years ago. It might not be what you expected it to be, but it feels a bit like time travelling. You see multiple versions of yourself experience similar events, only the latest version has complete knowledge of what happens at the end. I hope my younger self would be proud of my older self. My older self, if he could, would whisper in my younger self's ear: "Everything will be alright." And it will be. Maybe not now, but eventually.

Blog no.30: Snow

Dear solid water fans,

  It's been a year and a half since my last one more or less. Why am I taking time off my busy day to write this you're asking? No? Too bad cause I'm telling you anyways. Well, first of all I'm slightly sick so this time it's not frowned upon to stay inside in a Saturday night (as if that ever stopped me) and second of all, nobody cares so let's move on. Is this one really about snow you'll ask me? The answer is...no. Kinda, but not really. Besides that awful pun, I just wanted to pay homage to one of my favourite bands who I'll be seeing again after 8 years, this time with an older and a bit more appreciative view.

  One thing you have to know about me is that I absolutely love snow. I mean, who doesn't? It's white and fluffy and you can hurl it at people without risking assault charges. It's rare where I'm from which makes it's few appearances special, kinda like whenever Janice came on Friends: you appreciated her at first but then you just wanted to curl her into a ball and throw her on stuff. I become such a little kid when I see some snow that I want to punch myself in the face.

  The most underappreciated part of snowfall is the aftermath. We didn't get many (if any) snowfalls back in Cyprus but I've been fortunate enough to move to a city with a slightly more favourable climate, so a few winters in it finally happened. It felt just like walking into a teenager boy's bedroom in the 00's after his family switched to a DSL internet connection: everything was covered in white. Now, Athens is not the prettiest nor the cleanest city, but I love it nonetheless. After a snowfall though, all the ugliness and trash and imperfections are covered by a deep layer of fluffy, white snow. I mean it's still got some trash underneath, but don't we all? Everything looks so clean, calm, perfect, you feel a bit bad disturbing it at first so you just sit and appreciate it for a bit. You then make huge balls of it, stack it a meter high, stick a carrot and some buttons on it, and you give it a name to make sure that it  becomes a person before it dies a miserable death the following morning. 

  So this blog isn't really about snow, shocker I know, but rather about clean slates. It's something all of us need at one point of our life or another, some in multiple points of their lives. Some do it every year, but they call it "New Year's Eve", a day to drink our livers off and make resolutions that last shorter than that one carton of milk in my fridge. I'm not very fond of New Year's anymore, I haven't been for the last few years due them being regularly shitty for me, but I've decided to take the less cynical approach this time around and accept that the day does serve a purpose, just like any other arbitrary holiday. 

  However silly might seem that we celebrate another year around the sun, when in reality nothing changes but the dates on our calendars, it's still a nice checkpoint to which you can add things that have changed for you. You don't see anyone doing "Best movies of March 2019 - February 2020", it just doesn't make sense. A year is a pretty decent time-frame to see how you've fared, and I've learned to appreciate that in itself, even though I'm still rather skeptical about paying a small fortune to go out for drinks with my friends as opposed to any other day of the year. 

  For me it's been pretty damn decent. I've learned that it's okay to feel bad sometimes, and it's more than okay to take time to relax and do nice things for yourself, more commonly known as "Treat yo'self". I've lowered the number of times I have to go through exams in my damn university to single digits, I've had a kick-ass girlfriend for the whole year and I've finally moved from my lovely apartment, among other things. I was expecting the moving to be more, well, moving for me but I was surprised how easy it was for me to let go. I made almost 7 years worth of memories in that apartment, a few bad ones but mostly great, though I guess after taking a whole damn month to clean it, sell my furniture, move all my stuff to another apartment and deal with the shitty-ass owner of the house and his snobby wife, it felt cathartic seeing it for the last time, placing the key on the counter and imagining Jefferson Airplane's "Embryonic journey" playing in the background. It felt like turning a page, like a New Year's of sorts. It felt like fresh snow on a cold winter day. A clean slate. 

  It's always fun reminiscing times of the past with joy, even times that didn't seem so joyous the first time around. When I was in the Netherlands visiting my sister a few years ago on New Year's Eve, sick to my core and sitting by myself on the attic, watching the fireworks by the window I felt kinda sad, like I was feeling pity for myself. Looking back though, all I remember is drinking beers with my sister, binge watching Avatar the last airbender under some blankets and playing video games with a friend of mine, and that's a damn fine way to spend your Christmas, if you ask me. Bad memories tend to fade, good memories stay with you forever. If you're stuck in the past you'll never be able to create new ones so, like I did on my last day of moving, tear that wall down and move on. It was plaster, but still.

P.S. Since I made a point about top 10 lists of the year, but I haven't seen 10 films worthy of my top 10 list, here's my top 9. 

9. Booksmart
8. I lost my body
7. Joker
6. Dolemite is my name
5. Klaus
4. Ad Astra
3. Once upon a time... in Hollywood
2. Marriage Story
1. Parasite

2021 Edit: 

Blog no. 29: No surprises

 Dear nightcrawlers,

  You can never know how things will work out in the end. So many variables fall into play, a butterfly flaps its wings and I suddenly decide to order pizza instead of burgers, or something of that sort. It's fascinating thinking about how much a single event can change the course of your life, or the universe, or everything, really. A single book can change your whole worldview and shape your future, every single encounter builds up towards your life path.
  At points you will face your worst enemy: hindsight. With 20/20 vision we can all make perfect life choices and live happily ever after with rainbows and butterflies and all that crap, but the harsh reality is that we don't have that luxury. It's like when you're taking off your glasses, and after a while you're unable to find them because you're not wearing your glasses. Kinda like waking up and trying to make coffee but needing coffee to wake up and make the damn thing. And you're searching, and everything's a blurry mess, and you're thinking how great life was when you had your glasses on, hoping you had another pair just for these occasions.
  Humans are greedy creatures, we will always downplay a situation because we could have gotten more out of it. Someone gives us a choice between two suitcases full of money, and even though we end up richer, we will be frustrated that we picked the smallest amount instead of being happy we actually got a positive net gain. I don't judge us, it's just who we are, but living your life in "what ifs" is not optimal since it hinders your ability to choose wisely in the future, sort of like a hot hand fallacy. When you keep scoring 3-pointers you keep shooting instead of thinking about the alternatives. That's why it's important to fail every once in a while, when you start missing those shots you start thinking more clearly and weighing your choices instead of just shooting on instict.
  I've had my fair share of luck and misfortune, and most of the times these two seemed to overlap. I hurt my knee pretty badly a few years back playing football, and I although my chances in making it professionally were negative, it was something I considered myself good at and something I enjoyed doing. At the time of my injury I was going out with a girl I met at a party, and it just so happened that a few hours before our second date I had to inform her that I can't meet her and thus cancel the date. Unfortunately, a week later I was leaving for Cyprus for the summer, thus the second date never took place and we eventually lost touch during the course of my vacations. Now, when I came back I didn't have any hobbies left, and a friend of mine introduced me to a student magazine he was writing of, encouraging me to start writing for them as well, which I gladly accepted since I couldn't kill time playing football anymore. In the writing team there was this girl who I liked but didn't really talk with much, up till my nameday which was the same day as my flight to Cyprus for my knee surgery,  when she messaged me to wish me a happy nameday and I think you know where I'm going with this. You gotta think, if I hadn't torn my ligament I wouldn't have cancelled that second date, I wouldn't have started writing and I definitely wouldn't be as into movies as I am today. It's all very How I Met Your Mother-ish, which is why that show resonates with me a lot.
  There will come a point though when you've had enough bad luck for a while, and you're starting to think "good god gimme a break". But the universe doesn't work that way, silly. You can't just ask for no alarms and no surprises and expect it to work. In reality, life's full of them. Instead of trying to avoid them you can just learn to adjust better. Resourcefullness is one of the best traits you can have as a person. Knowing when to counter punch and when to take hit when you're on the ropes. Dribbling past any problem that's in your way. There are a ton of sports analogies I can make, but you get the point.
  Hell, even this summer I had the (mis)fortune of seeing this in full effect. After a week-long vacation in Spain, it was time for me to return to Greece. Now for some context, this was a week of camping at a festival somewhere near Valencia. Tiring? Sure, but having no responsibilities out of, well, not dying, was pretty damn great. Everyone was dancing and drinking non-stop, there were huge lines of people everywhere and people who seemed to have taken huge lines of various drugs, and at any point I was expecting Wall-E to show up and start stacking up trash because I'll be damned if the place didn't look like something out of a Mad Max movie. People were hiding their booze outside at the beach, since it wasn't allowed in the concert areas, digging holes in the sand or just throwing stuff around as if they were playing the nastiest game of Jenga. Hope that future pirates enjoy cheap vodka and bad sangria. Despite all that, the festival was fucking amazing. The pool parties were the best of the bunch, even if I wasn't  one of the brave ones that actually jumped in. I did want to bring back some souvenirs from Spain but an STD wasn't very high on my list.
  Now the aftermath? We lost a bunch of phones, some clothes, a smidge of our pride and a lot of our dignity, but we still made it through the week safe and mostly sound; kinda hard to not inherit some sort of illness from all the sand and dirt that was around. Something that stuck with me aside from the aforementioned dirt and sand, was the fact that you could do anything you wanted and nobody would bat an eye, because hell, they probably have seen weirder things already. Dancing like you have been shot with a tranquilizer gun on the ass? Sure, go ahead. Making dirt angels in the sand on the beat of some reggaeton remix? People will probably join you. Shouting football chants while under the influence? Be my fucking guest. It was an exhausting couple of weeks for me, and even though I had a fantastic time, after a certain point I just wanted to chill for a bit. Of course though, things didn't quite turn out that way.
  A friend of mine and I were supposed to return to Athens via the Frankfurt airport with a few hours of wait time inbetween flights, but turns out that German pilots were on strike on the day of our departure, something that wouldn't be very surprising in Greece, but damn I had the idea that Germany of all places is immune to these kinds of protests. My friend ended up booking another flight, but my, albeit tired, cheap ass didn't want to miss on the free hotel that I supposed I was gonna get so I decided to stay put until I find a flight back home. After three satisfying meals and a fantastic nap I figured I might as well explore Frankfurt for a bit, wouldn't want to just waste all my time at the hotel.
  Around 8 p.m. I start walking towards the city centre to get some money from the ATM and a beer by myself, or so I thought. After getting lost a couple of times and having to climb some sort of hill on a bridge, only to find myself on what looked like train tracks and nothing else, I managed to get the the centre. Reaching the ATM, I get the money but I realize that I can't see the machine returning my card, and in true IT fashion I start pushing random buttons as if it will realize that "gee dude that's exactly the combination of buttons I've been looking for to spit your card right back out". I then call the customer service number that was on the ATM, and a few minutes in I realize I don't actually understand german, hence I have no idea what the guy I called was telling me. A group of friends come out of the vestibule so I ask them if they can help with my situation. I give my phone to one of them who has a very interesting and agreeable 5-minute conversation with customer service, only to tell me that they can't help me cause it's Sunday and the bank's closed, of course.
  Being bummed that I wasn't sure the money I had left would suffice for the rest of my trip, since I had no idea when I would be able to fly, I took up to the guys' offer to join them for some beers, I knew I could use the alcohol at that moment. The streets near the main station were filled with drug addicts and trash, something not wholly unfamiliar to someone living in Athens, but a big surprise once again for someone who was visited Germany before. Nevertheless, we ended up going to a weird Colombian/German bar full of drunk middle-aged people and a very enthusiastic and voluptuous bartender. One of the guys who was just returning from the bathroom was very kind to inform us that the coked up dude in the table across from ours offered him some for a very appealing price, but none of us was trully excited to try their luck, or lackthereof. Eventually a few more people joined us, a freakishly tall guy and someone who had just broken up with his girlfriend and was, therefore, pretty damn wasted. I ended up having a ton of fun with those guys and was sad that I had to abandon their company, since I had to check in the airport early in the morning in order to see if I can get a flight out. One of them was travelling to Stuttgart the next day and offered me a place in his car in case I couldn't fly out and I wanted to visit my godparents instead, so we exchanged numbers and I'd update him as soon as I found out about my flight.

  My way back to the hotel was not without hiccups either. Google Maps insisted in me going through what looked like an active factory, full with smoke coming out of pipes and all that jazz, so I did just that. I ended up reaching a dead end where the river Rhine was, since the 5-metres-above-ground pedestrian bridge was closed, so I did what anyone would have done: I climbed some rusty, dirty, spiderwebby machinery as if I was freaking Ezio because honestly, I just wanted to get some sleep. I managed to get on the bridge, walk across the river and parkour myself out of it as well. Afterwards it was just a formality of walking through some forest with no lighting using my phone as a torch for half an hour, and a breezy walk towards the hotel. I was eventually able to fly the next morning, and had to refuse the offer to go to Stuttgart, but I was just happy to finally go home.
  A few days later I'm shopping at a market near my appartment, I take out my wallet and I see a shiny little thing that resembled the credit card that the evil german ATM selfishly devoured. Turns out I might have blacked out for a few seconds when I was getting money, just enough for me to put the card back in my wallet and not realize it, thus triggering all the events that transpired the previous day. I actually never told my parents about it because we had to cancel the card and go through the trouble to order another one, so in case they end up reading this: I'M SORRY.

  Generally, I have so much faith in failing upwards that whenever a misfortune comes my way I scoff, laugh it out and I try to make the best out of a bad situation. I just think that shitty things will eventually happen to you, and a whole lot of them at that. You can always play the percentages and take zero risks, assuming that your goal in life is to just live long and uneventfully. Or you can take some risks, get out of your comfort zone and make your chances count, your moments memorable. Captain Jack Sparrow, amongst many philosophical genious he showcased in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, quotes: "The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem. Do you understand?" Aye aye captain. I understand.


G'night mateys. 

Blog no.28: Thinking of a place

Dear stargazers,

  I didn't know who to address this to and "stargazer" seemed like a really thoughtful, deep, pretencious-ish adjective to use so there you go. It's been a while and I'm listening to a track by The War on Drugs called "Thinking of a place" and I can't but do just that. But as I'm a man of many places that *cough* occasionally *cough* likes to sit on his ass and do literally nothing, I'm thinking of several instead of just one.
  I haven't been back to Cyprus in a few months, but most importantly I haven't been there for the past two summers which is pretty damn huge to me. I've always spent my summers there, same old boring summers, you know the drill, but they all had something in common: they were a tradition. Much like decorating a Christmas tree every Christmas and only taking it down when the first person tells you "Damn, you still have your Christmas decorations?", or having a "surprise" party for one of my university friends using the same non-birthday-candles and a lame excuse to hang out even though they probably expected it, as the sarcastic quotes aptly indicate. I've spent countless summers (well, 21 to be exact - guess counting ain't that hard when you're 23) sweating my ass off with my friends in the hot, humid bore that is the Nicosia "summer in the city" experience, but we always ended up having fun, more or less. Playing cards and videogames all day, getting drunk at live shows playing the same old, familiar songs, going to the beach every once in a while and arguing over the shotgun seat, randomly popping up on our vampire friend uninvited to watch a movie and raid his fridge, just being as carefree as one can be during the summer, basically. It's sort of like living in a semi-rural Southern US county, minus the guns and murder mystery novels. So those were my summers up till last year, when I thought that fuck it, I wanna try something new. Enter Athens.
  So summer last year was my first one away from Cyprus, from the ones that I do remember, and the first one away from my family and my friends. After spending a week in an island camping with awesome people, it was yet another summer in the city for me. And it's not a myth that the Athens city centre becomes a ghost town during August, it's the damn truth. After doing what I do best in these situations - sitting on my ass being as useless as I could ever be - I started going to some open air cinemas to catch a movie or two since they seem to flourish at that time of the year. I watched a few awesome movies and a crappy one, but the most important date of the summer was August 15th. The 15th of August in both Greece and Cyprus is celebrated the usual way: our families gather to slaughter and consume delicious animals because something happened to Virgin Mary a long time ago, supposedly. Not that we needed an excuse to do that but y'know, traditions and all. But wait, this time it's also AWAY FROM THE CITY! That's right, it's the one day of the year that everyone fucks off from the city and goes to the beach or the mountain to have their feasts because that's probably what the god wanted us to do, I guess. For my family this date is also quite important since it's my sister's nameday and the 16th is my brother's birthday, so we did something every year to celebrate both. My parents seemed to have planned their kid's births quite well, huh. Well, this time the celebrations were without a very key member in all the fun-havin'; that being myself of course.
  So here I am, alone in Athens, trying to figure out how to make this day seem not as miserable as everyone assumed it would be. After snooping around on Facebook I found a free showing of a greek movie called "Cheap Smokes", about a guy meeting and spending time with a girl on the 15th of August in the centre of Athens during the 00's and I figured, why the hell not. I was surprised to see that the theatre was packed, and I felt sad for those poor fucks that ended up here of all places, until I realized that I too was a poor fuck that didn't have very many choices and it all suddenly made sense. The movie was actually amazing for what it was, a nonsensical summer love story with wacky characters, a lovely soundtrack and beautiful views of Athens in the summer. The thing that resonated with me was the feeling of solitude it was oozing. The main character was just walking around the city at night, drinking coffee, pretending to know what he was doing, much like everyone else. His coolness, his effortlessness, just his general worldview seemed to resonate with me. Much like me, he enjoyed going places on his own. He liked these little talks with random people, learning about these small intricacies that make everyone unique. He liked looking for details, and in his words, he liked "collecting moments".
  After the movie I placed my headphones on my sweaty head and started walking at a random direction. I went through places from where I had collected these so-called moments, memories of the good and bad variant. The shuffle was on fucking point for the first time since forever, and the songs kept hitting me, one after another, with waves of nostalgia and moments of their own. I walked for what seemed like an hour and a half, following some of the movie's shots, with a huge grin on my face, dancing whenever nobody was around. I never wrote about it 'till today because it was an experience I couldn't easily describe. Saying this sounds cheesy, I know, but good god you had to be there.
  When talking about favourite cities or places in general, Athens comes up quite often. I've seen people shit on it for being too industrialized, too chaotic, too dirty or too crowded, and it is all those things but I'd be damned if I didn't love it all the same. I didn't use to be as fond of this city as I am now, it certainly grew on me I'd say, and it still does day by day. I do believe that for all the shit I often say about it, it has, I think, what others cities lack: character. I'm grateful for all the moments that it has given me, because these truly are the best years of my life. I wrote a piece, not long ago, about how the main character didn't feel like she had a place to call home anymore. I used to think that was the case with me as well. Now, what do I think about when I'm thinking of a place to call home?
  Bet.

Your fellow poor fuck,
Stelios. 

Blog no. 27: When the sun goes down

Dear people,

  It's just people this time, since I don't believe that "music" people exist. I refuse to believe that there are people who don't enjoy music; everyone likes music, it doesn't matter how shitty I think your taste is. Whether you enjoy some ultra complex progressive band with percussion, harmonica, saxophone and whatever the guy on cocaine figured would blend well together with his crummy guitar, or just some dude smashing the bongos at the corner of the convenient store for some spare change, you enjoy music, period.
 So, rant about music listeners aside, I went to a concert a couple of days ago. After paying a small fortune for my cheap ass to get the precious Arctic Monkeys ticket, and misremembering when it was taking place a month ago because I'm a fucking idiot, the day finaly arrived on the 6th of July, NOT on the 6th of June as some good people might have thought. I stocked up with some sandwiches and cheap wine which I was definitely not expecting to get through security, and after suffering a small heart-attack due to thinking I forgot my ticket at home, a couple of friends and I arrivd to the venue: a glorified grass field which, admittedly, felt a lot like a hippie festival.  We sat for a couple of hours while the supporting bands were playing in order to be ready for the tall task that was ahead of us: standing up for the rest of the concert.

  The wine I brought wasn't half bad, and the sandwiches I brought were, well, edible, so we munched through them quickly and listened to the "way better than expected" bands that would typically just be filler before the main concert, but were actually pretty damn good. When Miles Kane showed up on stage everyone stood up as if the pope was in the house, as a sign that the big names were starting to arrive. The dude was quite good, felt like listening to an 80's rockstar with modern influences, and of course, he was dressed appropriately, with a colourful flowery shirt and an equally flowery bandana. Everyone was really getting into the show while I was admiring the multitude of weird facial expressions his female drummer was pulling off and thinking about how freakishly long her tongue was. After his explosive hour-long set, and a small break inbetween, the next big name arrived:Alt-J.
  I hadn't listened to a lot of their songs before but what I listened to I liked, so I was pretty excited to see them live. The fact that their set was played out during the sunset might have skewed my enjoyment to their show, since I'm a sucker for sunsets, but damn were they good. Everyone was on their feet enoying the weird and oftentimes eerie sounds of the band. Occasionally, some cute girl that is actually a fan of them would hop on some dude's shoulders, and sing along to the unintelligible-to-human-ears lyrics while making a sign that could easily be mistaken for the Illuminati sign - heck, they both look like triangles to me. However much I wanted to listen to "When the sun goes down" when, well, the sun was going down, the moment they started playing "Taro", a song which even I and many other non-fans knew, the crowd went wild. I closed my eyes for a bit to take in the moment, because I realized I was gonna remember that one for a long time. The bass echoing through the speakers shook the ground so much it spread through my whole body, and I wasn't sure if my heart was doing its own thing or just following the rhythm: I could feel every vibration so clearly, I thought that even if I was deaf I'd be able to feel it. I turned around to see how much of the park had filled by that point, and the answer was all of it. Some people were singing, some people were dancing, a lot of them were recording non-stop with their shitty phone cameras, but all of them seemed to be having a good time, and that's when I realized why people go to all this trouble to see their favourite band live. It doesn't matter how good they actually are, the mere energy you get from being around fellow fans is enough for you to declare that money was indeed well spent.

  The Monkeys were great of course, and I'm so happy I got to see them live, but I wouldn't say that it was the highlight of my day. It's like Victoria's theory from HIMYM, that the moment that leads up to the kiss is the moment to cherish, not the actual kiss. That being said, the kiss was freaking good. Thrashing around during "Brianstorm", holding up our phones and accidentally taking a picture of the crowd during "Star Treatment", listening to high-pitched screaming when Alex Turner took his sleeveless jacket off and shook it around enough for its concentrated sweat to shoot in the crowd's direction, seeing the guy brush his hair every so often and "losing his train of thought" as if the bag of acid he had taken before the show just kicked in, all of that is part of the experience that contributed to making this an unforgettable night.
  To sum up: decent experience, a 4/5 from me.

Your friendly concert-goer,
Stelios Zesiades.

Blog no. 26: Blistered

Dear nostalgia addicts,

  Watching the sequel to Trainspotting a few weeks ago, I saw the now middle-aged characters latching to their previous lives and repeating mistakes of the past without missing a beat. I mean, seeing as they all were drugged up in their early twenties, their future was already looking grim. It's a miracle they all survived well into their fourties if you ask me, but it was sad that even though they tried to escape their past it just wasn't a choice for them, as is the case for a lot of people. Like how you get black-out drunk for the hundredth time, even though you promised to yourself you wouldn't drink again after your previous shenanigans, or how you decide to take out that tray out of the oven without using oven mitts, even though you've burned yourself the previous twenty times you've attempted this, as if this time you're freaking Elsa and your hand is magically immune to heat. Point is that sometimes even though we know we're making a mistake, we still do it because we feel the need to, and that's okay. Eventually our gag reflexes will reject alcohol, one hard liquor at a time, and our hands will be too blistered to even attempt cooking in the oven. Ι, for one, am fond of all those drunken memories (or lack thereof), and I can probably explain every scar I have with a cool story. By pure coincidence, those two usually go together. Who would have guessed  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  I once read somewhere that "it's funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different", more or less anyways. Looking back at four, five years ago is like entering a time capsule to a completely different time, with different people around you, different concerns, different tastes. Reading my diary entries from a few years back I realized how much different I was back then, and it baffled me because I didn't even realize it. Mind, me, I've only written a couple of entries since then, but those two are enough to give me an idea of who I was back then. I often find myself reminiscing about those times, much like Renton, Spud and Sick Boy did when "Lust for life" came on in the movie, not in a "life was so much better back then" kind of way, but rather because you've revisited those memories so many times, they've become familiar to you. And no matter how good your memory is, it's not like you're a reliable narrator of your own story, we tend to overexaggerate our memories to fit our narrative, and we tend to make them far better than they actually were. That's why we often revisit our failed relationships for another go, even though we know that the tray is hot, we still wanna touch it.

  Even in the off chance that our memories are actually as amazing as we think they are, there's still no point in feeling down that you're not reliving them, you should just be glad that you've actually lived them. Memory is a helluva drug, it drags you around and slaps you with waves of nostalgia, and it makes you reminisce about times that can't be replicated. All you can do is strive to make your days memorable and let go of the past. The sooner you do that, the carefree-er you'll be. It's a word, alright? 

"I wish there was a way to know that you're in the good old days before you've actually left them." - The Office

Your fellow memory latcher, 

Stelios Zesiades.