It's incredible how quickly feelings can change, how easily I can have a mediocre night followed by a stomp-your-feet-clap-your-hands-damn-this-world-rocks-and-my-life-is-changed night.
Friday was one of those annoying nights. After I posted (and let's face it, I was getting kinda mushy at the end. Whats up with that?), I decided I should try to find this pillow fight thing on Myspace to make sure it was actually going on. Mission accomplished (which is really incredible considering how difficult it is to find anything on that crappy site) - unfortunately, it wasn't happening till Saturday. Soooooooo what to do with my time?
Hung out around the house for hours, had dinner with Zuzana, tried to get a hold of people and did with varying success. No one knows how to pick up a phone. It's true - Dan agrees. I could go into a long explanation of the evening (which included me, frustrated, writing a really elaborate blog post in my head, and watching a man with a mullet dance like Michael Jackson. And watching two Eurotrash girls "dance" by hooking their fingers in their belt loops and swaying back and forth.), but I'll spare you the details.
The real point of this post is Saturday, an outstanding day in the life. Woke up around noon (yay!) for another incomparable lunch courtesy of Zuzana. Then, me, Tomas, and Zuzana drove about 30min outside of Prague, where the scenery completely changes into something resembling Pennsylvania. We visited a really great little village, thousands of years old, that was home to a monastery and a great hike to the top of a high cliff. And I didn't bring my damn camera!
Got home just in time to showoer, change the clothes, and head out to the pillow fight. I thought I was going to be late, but managed to get to the Astro Clock about 3 minutes before it all began, only to find...nothing...wait a minute...there are people, gathering, holding pillows! Sure enough, at 6:06, a whistle blew and the pillows began flying. It only lasted about a minute, but it was still awesome to witness something from nothing but a Myspace page! And the mountain of feathers that remained was blown into the sky by the wind, making it seem like it was snowing. (Flickr pics and a YouTube video to come). Met up with Paige and Maggie, and followed them back to the hostel they were staying at for the night (it's a long story), where we prepared dinner and had some deliciously cheap wine.
At about 10, we began the trek over to Abaton, where the infamous second-annual Sperm Festival was being held. The place was not easy to find - about a 15 minute walk from a Metro stop in Prague 8 (basically about as far from my house as a place could be). When we thought we might be lost, we asked for directions from a random guy who seemed like he was going our way - turns out John (that's him) works at an Internet cafe while finishing his studies at Charles University and was going to the same place.
It will be difficult for me to describe the scene at this festival. It was a cavernous warehouse, each room filled with smoke, well-placed beams of light, images projected on walls (on the wall near the entrance, just the word "Fertility"), and thumping techno-ish music. Surprisingly, there wasn't a suffocating number of people there, which is nice for a person who spends most weekends at clubs looking at and smelling peoples' armpits. Of course, one of the reasons for this was the large number of rooms - there were four stages, including a "cinema stage", on three different levels. Not to mention, bars in every corner. I took a bunch of pictures, which will be on Flickr soon.
By far the highlight of the evening was the festival headliners, a duo called Mouse on Mars who've been DJing together for about 15 years. I've never been to a concert like this, but I hope I can get to more. A floor completely packed with people, all dancing in place, but not with each other - such was the effect of that awesome kind of music that just envelopes you and forces your body to bounce up and down. (And most of them were probably on drugs, which could also explain it.) As a backdrop to their cooperative beatmaking, they projected a sketch of a skull with text running through the eyes saying things that essentially amounted to an indictment of America and all other governments for...well, existing (Anarchy, woo!). A multi-media experience of glitch-y, bass-y, fun-filled music and video.
After that, we hung out at another stage and listened to another headliner - Deadelus. Another sweet DJ, this one with a more mellow sound, and from the US (though he too had some anti-American stuff projected behind him. Made me realize - alternative culture means going against the mainstream, and the US is it now...). After his set, we took a short rest, then back upstairs to catch Czech rapper/beatmaker WWW, who raps like you'd expect Al Pacino to - eating the walls. As an added plus, I ran into Daedelus during this show, and we chatted for a moment. Turns out he's a USC grad!
So by the end of the evening (beginning of the morning? middle of the morning?) I had seen some fantastic performers, hung out with some great people (Prague is a very small place - my friends from FAMU were all at this festival, of course, but one of them apparently hangs out with Milo, the DJ from that great 80s night at Nebe. Not to mention, I met the guy who organized the pillow fight - he wants my pictures), danced enough to make my knees ache a bit, and stolen a poster for the event off of a wall (not like they need it any more). Rather than finding my way home on public trans (which would have been difficult for a few reasons), I took a too-expensive cab ride home. Eh, I don't pay for meals, I can afford it.
Today has been recovery day, for the most part. Another four hours of rehearsal went by like slow death, especially considering the headache I had forgotten to take Tylenol for. But to cap it off, Dan and I grabbed dinner at Radost F/X, a club/bookstore/music shop/lounge/printing press/veggie restaurant known as one of the best in Prague, and watched Lost.
Good thing I've got such an uneventful life. I'm gonna go pass out and start next week's adventures.
