Vacation Venture

I’m back!!!!

I’m in Greece!

I left NYC on June 29th and I will be retuning on September 3rd.
I am currently in Athens staying at my grandparents place as I do every summer but this year I brought a buddy! Sophia Mueller. She left on July 10th so she's gone now but she was staying with us in Athens for like a week and then she meandered back to Germany where she’ll stay for most of the rest of the summa.

While she was here I got to unabashedly do tourist stuff. Y’know I had never walked up the Acropolis before like whattt, I should have done that when I was younger. What I did do when I was younger was go to the Acropolis museum in 2015. Here are pics of before (9 y/o) and after (17 y/o).

This is the longest we are staying in Athens, we usually only stay for like… a week but this time we’re staying for two weeks and we leave for Chios (the island with my dad’s side of the family) on July 15th. At the time of writing this it is July 14th so we leave tomorrowwww.
There's nothing to do in Athens when you don't have any friends. Damn that sounds sad as fuck but mannnn I know nobody here other than like family and family friends. I can't go out into the city until 12 (like I did with Sophia) with my mom. My ultimate hope is that one day I could assemble a lil group of new york type freaksandqueers and I could go to a show here and get involved in the scene here. That would be so sick.

OH MY GOD When I first got here I saw two fliers while walking around. One for the Melvins on July 3rd and the other for Kim Gordon on July 4th like whatttt. The Melvins one was sold out but the Kim Gordon one still had tickets available they were like 30 euros which is surprisingly cheap for kim gordon. I didn't buy tickets because what would Sophia do? Come to the concert with me and not enjoy it? Or would I leave her at home... alone?? That would be sad.

Movie Time

To pass the time I've been on my movie watching grind.
In preparation for watching Scary Movie I want to watch all the movies that it parodies (I had to look up the conjugation for to parody for that word right there) so I recently watched I Know What You Did Last Summer. Unpopular opinion but I loveeee jumpscares. They're so fun and they get my adrenaline pumping. I also love gore and sfx. Give me some ugly looking gooey face mask and I will be content. My favorite horror movies are stupid and campy and dumb and idiotic.

I'm not a big fan of psychological horror because it means I have to think. I want to watch a movie for enjoyment not to be a genius. There are obviously some exceptions to this when the smart movie is really well done like Parasite. But I just consider these to be really good movies, not necessarily my favorite movies.
The other movies mentioned in Scary Movie that I haven't watched include: Kazaam, The Shining (sorry...), The Blair Witch Project, American Pie, The Sixth Sense, and The Usual Suspects. Some are less important than others (Sixth Sense and Kazaam spoof is only one line of dialogue) so I'm just gonna watch the big ones. Or will I? Dunno.

My top 5 movies are: 1) Serial Mom (John Waters but in 1994 featuring L7 and Matthew Lillard) 2) Rocky Horror Picture Show 3) Dead of Night (1945 British Horror Anthology) 4) I'm No Longer Here 5) My Cousin Vinny

Casual reminder to... check out my Letterboxd... @konstantuba.... if you wanna keep track of my measly opinions.
I've been obsessed with My Cousin Ever since I saw it on the plane from NYC to Athens. Hilarious. I recreated the biological clock scene and posted it on my instagram story to much acclaim from my fans. It was too tempting not too use "fans" I am giggling in my seat as I type.

I haven't watched so many classic movies it's disgraceful. I haven't watched the godfather. I can hear the gasps emanating from my screen already.

Music

I've been getting into Kate Bush recently. It was sparked by listening to this one podcast episode (Deep Dives and Deep Cuts) going through all of her albums and my mind stuck on the album The Dreaming. I had that album on repeat at the end of June and start of July. I'm not too crazy about the other albums but my second fav Kate Bush album is Never for Ever but it gets a bit too slow for me sometimes but then again it's also a matter of getting used to it.
I recently reorganized my main playlist. I got rid of the songs I got sick of and primarily removed songs by Circle Jerks, Dicks, and Government Issue. I might return to them in the future but I just need a lil break. The band that dominates my playlist is the Dead Kennedys, been going through a lil DK phase rn.
My top tracks of July according to Spotify are 1) Stand Still by Gorilla Biscuits 2) Mater Dolores by Screamers 3) The Wedding List by Kate Bush

Mein Herr from the Cabaret soundtrack is #13 because after I watched the movie I played that song on repeat.
Stand Still is #1 probably because of of the delivery of the lines "Our lives are led by TV shows, you know it's true/Instead of thinking we play Donkey Kong/There's something wrong with that/We're made to think life is like a game show/So here we go again/The one who dies with the most toys is the one who wins" I just loveeee the way "Donkey Kong" and "game show" are said.

I found some Greek Punk and New Wave/Post-Punk stuff while going on a spotify dig. Most of Greek punk is trash like absolute garbage sitting on the line between metal and "pop punk" ugh it's so bad. Post-punk is where its harder to mess up so I've found some good stuff there. Sometimes they're singing in English but with a Greek accent and that throws me off because the lyrics are corny and hearing the accent gives me a laugh.
If you have a general idea of what my music taste is and you come across a song that fits the criteria then pleaseee send to moi 😁😁😁

Miscellaneous

I bought a French newspaper from the airport in Athens when me and my mom dropped off my grandparents to fly to Kos where they would stay with my aunt and cousin in their vacation home there. I tried reading it but man oh man I needed a translator so bad. I could get the general idea very vaguely from understanding the key words but I did not know what was actually going on. I started making a list of interesting or useful french vocab. like auparavant which means previously and on va vous défoncer which has many-a-definitions but my fav is we'll beat the shit out of you.
The graffiti in Athens really interests me. It's wayyy more political than in NYC, Athens is full of acabs, 1312s, fuck nazis, the anarchy a's, stuff like that. I should watch a documentary on it.
I have yet to begin writing my college essay. whoops.
Hulu (the only streaming service I have a subscription for) DOESN'T WORK IN GREECE it's infuriating. I used to have Netflix but I cancelled my subscription because I was sick of it and how all the movies on American Netflix suck ass. But Netflix in Greece is 100x better because it has obscure older movies. It's how I watched Dead of Night and now that is one of my favorite movies. Lots of Italian movies... but no Greek ones... IN GREECE. I'm considering subscribing to Netflix again so I could download movies for the ferry ride tomorrow to Chios. Not sure if I will go through with it.

I love leopard print. Thus, I will leave you with this image, no clue where it's from:

Tsakali Time