bomad.com™

Welcome to Croatia

"...where the fish is fresh and the music is stale!" So says my wife, and rightly so.

Just click here to check out a video clip of the "Free live performance!" that we had the bad fortune honor to enjoy during our (otherwise) marvelous seaside fish dinner last night. Not sure which aspect of the show had the highest impact. Was it the oh-so-very shopping-mall-organ-music sound? The pony-tailed, middle-aged, lounge lizard in a neon Ozzie Osbourne t-shirt? The bored-out-of-her-mind, overly bleach blonde "vocalist" all gussied up in a tight black leather prom dress? Or was it the repertoire of music ranging from "When the Saints Come Marching In" to what we can only presume were just very, very bad renditions of old Croatian favorites.

Italy is a Third World Country

When I said that to Kevin a week ago, he replied: "Third-world?  *Third*-world sir?  When I picture 'third-world,' I picture starving people, swarms of flies and early-stage animal husbandry."

Sounds like Oakland to me... Ba-rump-pah!

Ok, fair enough. A Second-World country then. Basically functioning, if corrupt, government and infrastructure, and yet I do have to agree with my wife's earlier posting. It ain't no France.

Here is a list of the real stuff that makes Italy a Third Second-world country:

Gee-lot-o-love

Giollitti's is arguably one of the two best gelato spots in all of Rome. Why else would we repeatedly go there when this sweet yet creepy gelato-master mercilessly hit on both of us each and every time. Here you see him posing with MeiMei just seconds after plopping a sloppy kiss on her neck. Fortunately, I escaped unscathed--physically at least.

Vatican't take it anymore!

Here, frustrated with Italy and all it has to offer, MeiMei proceeds to throw herself off the top of St. Pietro's Basilica in the Vatican. Wow, that's a view to die for!

Foxes Prefer France

We have bid a not-so-fond farewell to Italy.
"What???" you exclaim in horror. "Everyone LOVES Italy!"
Well, I'm here to tell you that the Foxes prefer France. Read on to find out why...

Simon and Garfunkel in Rome

Dale and I had an incredible time at the S&G concert. Click here for Photos. It was a lifelong dream for both of us to see them play live, and here we just happened to stumble across a free concert while we are living in Rome! Amazing!! It was so stunningly beautiful I can't express - half a million people...

Fulfilling my duty

Right now Meis and I are sitting in front of the Coliseum in Rome awaiting the beginning of Simon & Garfunkel live in concert. We are accompanied by 500,000 of our closest friends. Half a million people here sweltering in the August heat. And then over the crowds come a slew of balloons with this tag attached.

This election is about more than the US. Its an issue for the whole world. So I'm doin my duty. GET OUT AND VOTE! Uh, you know, in a couple months and all.

"Of pigs and purses," a photo essay.

This is about building a tipi. No, not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill, middle-class American-Indian tipi. We're talking a big tipi. A really big tipi. For those Burners reading this, a tipi the size of our dome. 35' tall. Nearly 100 feet in circumference. The engineering and problem solving were of Toolbox and Tumps-ian levels. Dare I say, they'd have been proud. Damn proud. Click here to see how it went.

Photos from The Hill That Breathes

Well, I finally got access to some bandwidth, so I'll be putting up photos every couple days for a while now. If you check on the left, you'll see a new album with a few nice shots from our week at The Hill That Breathes. Coming soon, "Tipi Time!" Stay tuned.

ex post facto necessitate

Catch up time. Big time. Clearly I've been remiss in keeping you all up to date over the past couple weeks. Blame it on the hippies. Blame it on sparse internet access. Or, as Milli Vanilli would say, "Blame it on the Rain." Whatever. You're going to see a mix of posts over the next week as I catch up on all the hilarity of our trip to the hippie commune outside Urbino in Northeast Italy, photos galore of our awesome time in the Cinque Terre on the Northwest coast of Italy, and our new home-du-jour: Rome! Please pardon the lack of 'temporal linearity' as bomad becomes a detached stream of consciousness, ex post facto.

Did I get enough erudite references in there for everyone? (grin)