Roofs, Walls and Floors

I met a girl on the beach in Tel Aviv that said she found an apartment in the Florentine section of the city on a web site called:

Taanglo.net

Get Down Girl - Go Head Get Down

Music Recommendations I'm Gathering From Travel in Athens

Orishas
Solomon Burke
Nicola Conte
Yasmin Levy
Sophie Delila
The Burger Project
Dub Inc.
Let's Tea Party
Afra and his amazing beat box
Monika

Georgios Papadapalous Part 2

Sadly Talia didn't have the funds or desire to see night two of the synch festival so I went alone. Big shout out to my two Cyprus gay men -- I met my dancing soul mate Pavlos Ziouha and his ex-boyfriend on Friday and spent most of Saturday night getting super sweaty and jumping with them. Pavlos and I rocked out at Junior Boys, Squarepusher and The Bug like noone else - when my hands were in the air - his hands were in the air. When I did windmills on the floor- he did windmills on the floor :)

Highlights:
SQUAREPUSHER - like you need an excuse to shake your whole body as fast as possible? Sick live show here - crazy beats and visuals unlike anything else - this act really made the festival.

Mulatu Astatke and the Heliocentrics - Go out and buy their new cd immediately. It's just feel good world music with this old dude who's the shit Mulatu Astatke playing congos and xylophone. Budos Band needs to hear the heliocentrics!!

The Bug: Dubstep at its very very best. A packed house - this felt like Berlin or an underground club in the UK. Just bouncing feels soo good.

Hudson Mohawke- I blogged about this guy months ago when Sashe Frere Jones mentioned him as part of the Glasgow collective in the same article as Flying Lotus from LA as a new genre of hip hop producers. Well - turns out the guy is 24 but looks 12. I told him he had such a baby face but thanked him profusely for my favorite song so far of 2009 - Zoooooom - looks like such a boy though for such manly music :) But possibly best part of festival because I met Georgios Papadapalous here - a greek academic hipster who's currently studying in the Netherlands at the "Post academic institute for research and production fine art, design and theory" We got down.

Line Up: Again though F highlights the whole thing rocked.

The Matthew Herbert Big Band - Electro jazz - reminded me of guy I met at Be Berlin event that's composing an electric symphony at Lincoln Center
Mulatu Astatke and the Heliocentrics
Squarepusher

A Mountain of One
The Teenagers - The only act of the festival I missed :(
Junior Boys - Great show!!

Night on Earth
Biomass
Fennesz
2L8

The Bug
Hudson Mohawke

Alex Tsirdis
Caribou

NTEIBINT
Shit Robot
Aeroplane - Cyprus men said these guys are awesome I'll keep an eye out!
Matthew Jonson

Georgios Papadapalous Part 1

Friday night of the Synch festival was a smashing success. First of all, this music festival in Athens was tiny compared the concerts like Coachella and Bonnaroo. There was only a few thousand people in total for both nights and even then - there was always space to dance and an easy, hassle free way to get front row center.

For night one - here are some highlights:

Puppetmastaz- These 4 guys are from Berlin and they're making English hip hop delievered through furry hand puppets. With characters like a rhino, a turtle and a chainsaw wheelding teddy bear -- this act was talented, hilarious and very dadist. We spoke to the band after and they're huge in France - sellling out shows and festivals all summer. One member who's originally from Vietnam but now lives in Berlin told me if I want to go to summer afterhours spots in Berlin to go now --- there's a conversation with the city to close down all the best riverside dance spots and to build condos. BOOO.

Friendly Fires - Sounds kind of like U2- you can tell these guys will be huge in a few months. They're live show is awesome, very high energy electro rock. Couldn't even get close when I saw them at Coachella but here I was front row - dancing right next to members of the French band The Teenagers!!!

But to be honest - everything was amazing.

The line up:

Jazzanova Live feat Paul Randolph
Florence and the Machine - weird wacky costumes, big blond afro, disco electro
Tortoise - I forgot how beautiful this music is and how much I enjoy listening to it in bed

Ebony Bones - great new act I'd never heard of
Fujiya Miyagi - Really a highlight too - this British band's live show has only gotten better and better since I saw them in 07
Friendly Fires

Evripidis & his tragedies
Cluster
Tasman
Family Battle Snake

Mari.Cha
3 Chairs

Puppetmastaz
Disateradio
Joe Goddard (Hot Chip DJ set)
New Young Pony Club DJs

A festivus for the rest of us

Festival season is upon us! Bonnaroo kicked off in Manchester, TN yesterday and I'm reminded of my journey to the great fields a few years back - screaming "BONAGOOO" in the muddy puddles by the clogged porter potties, seeing single shoes abandoned in the dirt and filth and hippies twirling fire sticks and throwing frisbees happily rolling on hallucenigenic mushrooms.

But I'm in Greece now and out of pure luck there are some amazing music festivals while I'm in town. This weekend I will be going to the Synch Festival at the Technolopolis - there's four stages of music promising the best of innovative electronica, new media and technology. The line up is sick and includes the Matthew Herbert Orchestra, The Bug, Squarepusher, Friendly Fires, a DJ set from a member of Hot Chip, New Young Pony Club and much much more!!! I thought i would only want to be in Athens for a day but with this festival we're here for 4!

And maybe coming back on the 19th for this: The Ejekt Festival comes to the Elliniko Exhibition Centre from June 18 and 19 and features the Pixies, Editors, Starsailor, White Lies, Lauryn Hill, Royksopp, Jarvis Cocker, Klaxons, The Subways, 2ManyDjs and James Lavelle. -- That shit speaks for itself!!!

Videos and updates to come...Oh, and since I'm in Europe it's all I can do to try to get to Glastonbury next week but really I'm traveling on a dime so that's a pipe dream!

I'll Kick Your Ass - Because I Invented This Game

Found out about this from Kfir. It's a NY Times article talking about artists and actors inventing athletic games as a form of participatory art. Pretty fun shit but also just playing regular dodgeball this winter was super fun for me - although any excuse to wear a costume is really ok in my book.

He also linked to the video:
Greg the inventor of Circle Rules Football is yummy and this just looks like a blast. They played it at Burning Man too!!

Surfing in Athens

Couch surfing that is!! Wow - what an amazing community around the globe of people who offer their couch or apartment to travelers. But it's usually much more than just a resting place - these people become ambassadors for their cities and step up to show other travelers around.

Talia and I arrived in Athens yesterday and stayed at a hostel in Syntagma Square. This bustling area is filled with tourists and restaurants that trap wandering germans, australians and americans into spending $10 on souvlaki (we were paying 1 Euro for street food.)

So yesterday we decided to couch surf and emailed about 20 different people in the city who said they could host two people. It turned out this man Demitris Tolis was a first time user of the site and he had no friends or references for his profile. We'd been warned with the service to stay w/ people that usually have both but the man had huge dreadlocks and a big friendly smile and his profession listed him as an editor.

Since we're traveling together both of us figure we have nothing to worry about with safety issues against one man so today we met D and are currently staying in his beautiful apartment in the Aghais Ionnis section of the city - 4 metro stops away.

He has kitchen space, a nice bathroom but the best part is the BALCONY! - complete w/ a unique Greek BBQ pit and a view of the acropolis at night that is just stunning and memorable for sure. Talia and I cooked all afternoon - Israeli salad, guacamole, ate Babaganoosh, olives, pastries from the corner bakery.... Y U M.

Then we sat outside because the one downside is D doesn't have a fan or air conditioning and this city is as hot as ball basically until the sun sets around 9:00pm - drinking wine, smoking cigs and taking photos.

It turns out when D comes home from work that he edits movies and commercials and lived in Prague for a year in 2006. He was in the cinema dance workshop from FAMU and acted in a movie that Talia saw at a screening of the films back in June of that year!!!!! What a tiny tiny tiny world this is!!!!

If you want to see D he showed us his band on Youtube. Check out "the koolians the spot story anti art." This band reminds me of the Spazmatics from San Francisco, in that they wear wigs, sometimes make up, crowd surf and cause general calamity!

Couchsurfing - you rock my world.

Super Cows

I worked in the ravitz or dairy farm today for a few hours this morning and learned a wikipedia page about Israeli dairy farming, genetics and milk production. 

Danny is the boss of the ravitz. He is an American/Israeli that grew up on the kibbutz, moved to Florida with his family and moved back to Israeli in his teen years because he missed it so much. 

Danny explains to me that the cows in Israel are super cows. Every animal is electronically monitored on their ankles and around their necks and every bit of information is channeled to one central data bank. 

The best females and paired with the best males, artificially inseminated and reared so that their offspring will produce the highest fat to protein ratio in their milk. 

The cows are mixed with the best cows of the United States and around the world to produce stronger breeds but the cows in Israel have the highest average milk production per cow in the world! 

This could explain why the yogurt, chocolate milk and cottage cheese is so damned good! 

Obama is a muslim

No matter what I say, two separate intelligent, well off Israeli's tell me Obama is a muslim. Many Israeli's do not support Obama and they think he's not for Israel but they specifically believe he is muslim -- even though he has said repeatedly he's christian. They say - he comes from a muslim country, he's muslim.

This kibbutz isn't big enough for the both of us..

The daughter of the family i'm staying with told me such a juicy story i just need to write it down. She dated one south african for almost 4 years. He was poor then. Now he works at an oil rig in Dubai and the UAE and works 4 months on, one month off -he can probably retire at 40 at that schedule. She said he has two apartments and a porsche but it wasn't working out.

Her second boyfriend she had two children with. They got along fine until they broke up about a year ago - when her beautiful daughter was born. Now it's clear he's not paying enough child support for his kids and she may have to bring him to court. What makes this like a semi soap opera is that the guy is Argentinian, he has 3 other children with another woman from the kibbutz who hates this daughter. The first girl's kids come over and eat dinner at the daughter's house sometimes but things are just up in the air. It could be a soap opera right?

Kibbutz is Kaput

Kibbutz's are changing. Real change happened in 1991 around first gulf war - people stopped putting their kids in the community center and started having them live in the house

now it's a community but more like a corporation instead of a way of life.

Family food feud- I've stayed with four different families now in Israel and the food they've fed me has gone from good to amazing to gourmet magazine worthy. I'm currently at the Ramot Menashe kibbutz with the family of family friends back in New York. The mom made the most amazing lamb/chicken meat balls, cheesecake and ruggalah I've ever had. Sorry to keep blogging about food but it's just soo good. When I'm living at the hostel I don't really eat anything besides the free bread and jelly they put out in the morning so I'm like a bear trying to stock up before I hibernate on the beaches of Tel Aviv.

Tomorrow they're putting me to work w/ the men and the cows in the morning but here it's an 8am wake up call and not the ungodly hour of 5:30a like back at WWOOF. Then in the afternoon i get to take a walk and go to the town pool, do some laundry and probably eat a lot more brilliant fresh squeezed juice, fat olives, savory hummus and flavorful meat dishes. Back to Tel Aviv Tuesday morning and off to Greece on Wednesday at 7am.

I want more Goor

I strolled the beach alone today and found myself in Jaffa. The city is basically an artists colony where I splurged and spent entirely too much money on a crocheted vest and sick belt... but discovered the Ilana Goor Museum which is a house that's nearly 250 years old. Originally, it was the first hostel basically housing jewish refugees to the area. Now the sculptor Ilana Goor lives there and turned it into a modern art museum. Besides the artist - who's in her 70s and currently traveling in the states- here are some other people I want to check out.. Links to come in the future but you can google them for now if you're even slightly interested

Hadas Levi
Jesus Soto
Adam Berg
Menashe Kadishman
Olga Woliniak
David Leviatan
Yehuda Porbuchrai
Todd Syler
Gary Goldstein
Roy Pajursky

A winner in winner

According to the Israeli newspaper a 23 year old guy from North or South Dakota won like 232 million dollars. Apparently he played his family's birthdays - spent $15 and walked away with crazy loot. The name of his town is Winner though, ironic! And enough to make the Israeli papers...

Day at the Beach

I'm very much enjoying my chill weekend time in Tel Aviv. On Saturdays it's shabbat and that means everyone in this city heads to the sea. Today was no exception. I woke up early and my friend Ori who is a soldier from my birthright program picked me up and we went to Herzilya- a town about 20 minutes north of Tel Aviv. The beaches are nicer, less crowded and apparently people are more adventurous (the spot we hit there were tons of jet skis and wind surfers - YUM)

I also played paddle ball for the first time in this country. The knocking sound of a rubber ball against wooden paddles is as soothing as the crashing waves here in the holy land. Everyone plays this game and it's way harder then these fit Israeli's make it seem. Ori is Israeli and he was awful so he has no excuse but I was very bad too.

After dancing, playing, swimming and napping in the sun Ori said goodbye because he had to go back to Army in Haifa. I decided instead of taking a bus that I would walk the hour and a half back to Tel Aviv. It was a beautiful walk as the sun set but I ran into a gate that stopped me from my destination, had to back track and hour and take a sherut anyway.

For dinner I took the people from Chicago in the room next to me to a delicious dinner of meat kebabs and condiment spreads at a bistro called Libra on Ben Yehuda street. We had amazing sorbet from the Iceberg ice cream shop and now i'm passing out early (1:30am) to figure out my ticket to Greece in the morning and where I will be spending the next few days (either up north in Haifa or off to Jerusalem.)

For a true party we must head underground...

I'm slowly discovering the underground electronic scene in tel aviv. Here are the spots that have been recommened for me to hit:
Barzilay
Barby
The Penguin
The Block
Comfort 13

Kid Koala will be playing at one of these spots in early July. Paul Oakenfeld and Maddonna have shows in Israel in August.

As for clubs I've actually visited:

Tel Aviva- awful cheesy club near the Old Port
Clara - Amazing space right on the beach near Jaffa but TONS of Americans

Hostel Environment

My new home in Israel? Hayarkon 48 youth hostel. This spot is $20 per night for a dorm room bed in a room with a fan. I've been sleeping outside on the bench on my balcony with my sleeping bag and pillow instead of my top bunk bed - paying 1 shekel for a locker for my valuables and eating free toast and jelly in the morning for breakfast. There are tons of Americans, Canadians and english speakers staying here. Everyone goes to party on the Port instead of venturing to Tel Aviv's underground scene but it's been a blast to meet other travelers and to see where people are headed next. But boy, what a tiny world. I've met people that know friends from Madison, went to school in Madison, lived in the Bay Area, studied in Prague and more. Crazy world we live in, i'm half way across the world in the middle east and seeing people I know! Lauren Wein, a girl I know from growing up, is doing an ESL teaching english program here and Adam Kittai is in med school here! We may meet up and go hiking up around the golan heights in a few weeks. Crazy.

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree

Today I had an amazing experience. I went to see the band "The Apples" play at something called the big stage by the suzanne dellal center in the neve tzedek area of Tel Aviv. This Israeli band is comprised of two djs that play in neon green jump suits a la daft punk with a full horn section, drummer and cello player. It was upbeat funk music and I danced for hours in the sun at a venue 1/100 the size of Central Park Summerstage.

I went alone to the venue and met a bunch of people into the psy trance party scene. We danced and shared beers and I discovered amazing Israeli music. I need to tell the guys from the Budos Band about the Apples. I think they'll really like them.

Bust a move

I keep getting Israeli music recommendations from hep cats and high rollers. Here is a list of some more people to check out:

Shlomo Artzy
Meir Ariel
Muki - Hip Hop
Mosh Ben Ari- Rastafari
Mashina
The Giraffes
MC Carolina

My friends brother also loves Bob Marley's "Redemption Song." It's the only song he can play on guitar but to be fair it's my only song too! I played for them Jose Gonzalez "Heartbeats" and now he's learning that too.

Blame Canada

Thanks to my new friend Arielle I met on the farm here is some music and cultural recommendations from our friends to the North.

Gregory and the Hawk- Female acoustic guitarist, beautiful cover of Beyonce's Irreplacable
The Bar Mitzvah Brothers
Sam Roberts
Apostle of Hustle
Patrick Watson
Do Make Say Think - The Rapture mentions them
Stars of the Lid

Also a web site for French music videos of awesome artists like Beirut and REM is BLOGOTHEQUE.COM

As for Montreal-
Tam Tams - Saturday morning drum circles on Mt. Royal
Picnic Electronique- Dance parties with electronic music
The Distillery- cute bar with huge mason jar drinks
Upstairs- jazz bar
Noir- Restaurant in the dark w/ blind waiters
Biodome- science center
San Tropol- restaurant and unique sandwiches (LOVE SANDWICHES)
Cock and Bull - Monday night Craft Night
Aux Bivres- Veggie restaurant

And television show "Popular Mechanics for Kids"

I referred a friend and all i got was this lousy t-shirt

Anula, one of the Thai workers who has been on the farm for nearly two years wore a shirt the other day that read "I referred a friend and all I got was this lousy t-shirt." I thought it was so ironic because his cousin or brother in law Lampoon has been here for three months. The two work about 13 hours a day for what me and Arielle figured out comes to about $2/hr ---- and probably that lousy t-shirt.

Conclusions for WWOOFING:
After doing a bunch of dishes, cooking meals with the freshest ingredients I've ever tasted and working laboriously in the fields sweating in places I didn't know could sweat and feeling thigh muscles I didn't know I had - tomorrow is my last day of work on the farm. I'm probably headed to volunteer on a kibbutz up north next week but for now I can say I survived and learned a lot about my personal work ethic and farming issues.

Although I will be leaving with blisters and bug bites as testimony to my experience here at Bet Yitzhak - I didn't break or sprain a limb or get one bitten off by a scorpion or snake and for that I'm thankful. I realize Thai people work hard as shit in thankless jobs and they're pretty damn cool.

After a week alone with my ipod wishing each day would end - this week I got a friend. Arielle is 19 and Canadian and did an Israel Outdoors birthright program right after me. We've been music sharing and working together this week and will go out and party in Tel Aviv tomorrow. I have another post coming about Canadian music and culture thanks to her knowledge.

Paris Hilton and her simple life has nothing on me :)