Bad/good/horrible/fantastic news

Isn't it funny (ironic as well) how one day you watch something on TV, something quite improbable to happen to you, and then next day, bang!, it does happen to you, and it's not a good thing, but still, you laugh with the irony of it... I've written before in my blog that I have been (and still am) a huge fan of "Married with Children", some American comedy series I grew up with (it was aired from 1987 until 1997). Some Greek TV station keeps playing old episodes every late afternoon, and the other day, right after I got back from the States, I watched the episode in which "Marcy D'Arcy" is hired by companies to pass employees bad news, news about people being laid off. The thing is, the first time she did it for her own company, she had an orgasm(!) "on stage", and so other companies thought it would be better to have someone announce massive lay offs this way, rather than in a cold "we regret to inform you that the company is in desperate need of cutbacks, so screw you, get the hell out of here, go find job somewhere else, you losers" way. Well, next day some fat, I mean f a t, ugly, with a voice so heavy you could pass her for a 60 year old dock worker, woman, came to my newspaper's offices to announce us that half of the people working there are gone, puff, history, have beens, and that the rest of us have two months and two months only to work miracles and keep the newspaper alive. Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against fat people, for Lord's sake my own mother could be described as... well... let's just say "overweight", but this specific fat woman I wouldn't mind cutting little pieces off her humongous belly and buttocks, while listening to her beg for mercy (mer-what? Naaaaaaa, not in my dictionary...). Later on, a colleague of mine who is also a huge "Married with Children" fan and I, talked about how much better it would have been if our company had sent... say... Monica Bellucci, or, OK, let's get real, say... Olga Farmaki to pass us the bad news (you need to be Greek to know Olga Farmaki, or you can just google her. She is supposed to be possibly the hottest TV persona right now in Greece). By the time she'd finished telling us the bad news, we wouldn't remember anything, and if we did, we would only be hoping for more lay offs, so she would have a reason to come back... Oh yeah, we made all sorts of stupid jokes once the fat lady left, trying to keep our spirits up...
The thing is, though, that from all the people in my newspaper, I am the one feeling guilty about my reaction to the news we were passed. For quite some time now, I have been thinking about quitting my job in June, spend that month in Austria and Switzerland using the media accreditation I believe I will be given next month by UEFA for the EURO 2008 football competition (that's "soccer" for my dear American readers, if there are any), and then flee to South America for... have no idea how long. Will I go for it? Beats me... I don't know if I will find the guts to quit when the time comes (mind you, I have already done it once, back in 2004, and despite what some of you may think, the second time is more difficult than the first one). Now, if the newspaper closes down, I will be... free, liberated, I won't have to make any tough decision, because fate will have made it for me. So, bottom line, having my paper closing down wouldn't be such a catastrophe for me, quite the opposite actually, but on the other hand, there are many people who work there, people with families, people with wives and kids, people with mortgages, people who depend on this job, they are not single and irresponsible like me, and this is why I feel guilty. Because deep down I am wishing for something that will perfectly suit me, but will be a major blow for a couple of dozens of other people (if right now you are thinking that I am a pathetic little rat, oh well, I don't blame you...).
OOOOOk, on a brighter note, five days after coming back from the States, I am happy to "announce" that I have decided to do something I have been thinking about ever since I was in my early 20s. What's that? Oh no, I'm too embarrassed to spit it out. Then, why do I mention it? Because this little thingy on the right, the counter, says that an average of ten people bump into my blog every day, and today some of those ten people may be in my shoes, may be thinking about doing something for a really long time, but kept postponing it, thinking that they don't have what it takes to go for it. If you are such a person and if you are reading these lines, take it as a sign, take it as a little pat on the back, as a little "come on, what do you have to lose, go for it!" I know one little sign is not enough to make us accept it as a real sign, but maybe later today you will bump into another blog, or you may see something on TV, or you may hear something on the radio, or a friend of yours will mention something in some phone talk you may have, and then at the end of the day you may realize that too many little signs have gathered up, so many that it can't be accidental... (Eeeeeehm, if you are some weirdo who has been thinking about committing suicide for some time now, pretend you never read this last paragraph).

We can run, but we can't hide...

Chicago, 8pm local time, having tried a while ago Giordano's famous "deep dish" pizza. I was naive enough to go without having made a table reservation, but I was damn lucky, as there was ONE table available. A cheerful girl came and took my order. "It will take about 35 minutes", she told me all too naturally. Seeing my face expression which screamed out loud "how long?!!!", she was quick to explain that in such a busy place, this is how long it takes for an order to be delivered. I acted like a good patient boy (in a rare moment of wisdom I put in my small daypack just before leaving my hostel room, Bill Bryson's book, the one I have been reading since San Diego, "The Lost Continent", do-do-do read it if you are planning on a trip to the US). I got a "small", 10 inches pizza, which comes in six pieces. Three of those are now resting peacefully in my all too content stomach. The other three are getting cold in the pack the same cheerful girl prepared for me, seeing me hopelessly trying to finish up the pizza, which proved to be... should I say "filling"? It would be too poor a word. More like "ooooh myyyyy Gooood, how can ONE person eat alone SUCH a pizza?!" For 15 dollars you don't just have dinner, you do one of the musts while in Chicago. No kidding... Eating a "deep dish" pizza is one of the musts, as you would see if you were with me this morning at the gift shop right at the bottom of the John Hancock Building. You have t-shirts with Al Capone's face, others with "The Windy City" written on them, others with the city's professional sports teams, and you also have t-shirts explaining in 50 words what a "deep dish" pizza is. I'm telling you, having a deep dish pizza at Giordano's in Chicago, is like visiting the Eiffel Tower in Paris. You don't get to shoot a hundred photos, but you do get a couple of kilos heavier (picture me with my belly looking as if I am five months' pregnant with my pants' button, of course, unbuttoned). As for the Hancock Building, the girl working at the ticket's booth warned me, as I was handing her my twelve bucks, that because of the weather, from the building's observation deck I wouldn't be able to see anything (it was so cloudy today in Chicago that from the street level you couldn't see the top floors of the city's highest skyscrapers). The girl saved me 12 dollars. I didn't go up. Technically though, I did go to the Hancock Building (its bottom). Does it count?
I arrived at Chicago at 7:30 in the morning, having taken a four hours' flight from Oakland, "baby" San Francisco. I spent five days at "Frisco", and saving you from the torture of reading an endless hymn of mine to the city, all I'll say is that I "dared" compare it to Melbourne. Quick explanation: Melbourne = the city where Yours Truly would love to be living right now, the city I would fly to defend if one day, say... the Chinese attacked and the locals were in hopeless need of a helping hand to save their city from becoming a Chinese colony. Yes, I liked San Francisco that much. Its streets, its distinct neighborhoods, the general feeling you get while wandering around, its bookstores, its cool CD stores, even the ruthless hills that brought me to my knees more than once or twice. I have to go back to San Francisco one day, and this time it should be summertime...
Tomorrow morning I am flying to Munich where I will have to spend almost ten hours before flying to Thessaloniki, home. The trip has come pretty much to an end. I could write a book about everything I saw, about things I did, a good number of chapters would be dedicated to things I didn't do, but all in all I am glad I came. For two reasons. First because, simply put, I spent time in great places. San Diego, Tijuana, LA, San Francisco, Chicago, I consider myself lucky... Second, because I came to realize something I already knew, either way. We can all run from things troubling us, but we can't hide. We really can't hide. We can fool ourselves, we can pretend not to have something in our mind, but if you think about it, closing our eyes to reality is like using a credit card to pay for everything we buy, never handing over cash to anyone, but also never going to the bank to pay the credit card's monthly bill. Just because you don't pay your bill doesn't mean that the bank will be charitable enough to "forgive" you. The bank will "remember" you next month as well, and then the bill will only be way bigger, because taxes will have been added. It's a nasty circle, and it takes guts to break out. Guts, my friends... Lucky they who have them. God save us who don't...