and especially in europe. everyones got a country code. you never know if you need a zero or a one to begin the thing. so if a pretty girl says she’ll join you on a stroll down the red light district but gives you a phone number with an icelandic country code, you shouldnt be surprised if it takes you a while to get through to her.

but because this has been the strangest month ive ever had, i did get through to her and we did stroll down the red light district last night at not two am but closer to three am.

heres the problem with the red light district and why you shouldnt go there late at night. its not that youre going to get robbed. its youre going to be tempted.

im an old man. thats been established. so it takes a little more to get my intrests peaked, so to speak. fuckin thing about the red light district is they have that little extra to get you going.

in the daytime you can sorta pretend that youre just taking a shortcut through that little walkway on your way home but at night, late at night, who you kidding.

so these girls are from everywhere. they all look totally different. they all look hot. and theyre right on the other side of the glass. lord knows who this icelandic chick is, and you have enough money in your pocket for whatever goes down and some drinks afterwards.

and it was damn cold out there so when this long haired tomboy knocked on her window with a handcuff looking like avril lavigne’s twin sister i do have to say that i was tempted.

clearly she needed someone to help her remove that handcuff.

tonight if you havent heard we’re having a Buzznet Meetup so if youre in town, come on down to ‘t Arendsnest

‘t Arendsnest is at Herengracht 90, 1015BS, Amsterdam.

8pm which is 20:00 oclock if youre scoring at home

but if youre scoring at home i guess i wont see you at the bar.

photo by bicycle mark

and the rijksmuseum and i learned a few things

namely van gogh never wanted to be known as van gogh he wanted to be known as vincent

he never signed anything van gogh and yet thats how we refer to him thats how we know him,

thats even what they named the definitive museum in his honor.

all i gotta say is, if when i die you want to call me

van gogh

go right ahead.

i also learned that the crazier you are the better your art.

i looked at van goghs paintings and i was all, who wouldnt of bought that?

were the prices too high?

then over at the rijksmuseum i learned that rembrant ended up broke even though he was painting the night watch to get those ends.

i also learned about a wacky dude who was doing some worthy stuff was Caravaggio.

in one that i remember this young woman who looks awfully just like scarlett johannson is cutting the head off a sleeping man while an old woman looks on happilly in the apparently very cold room.

they had that dudes work right up next to rembrant and it was a very nice comparison, lemme tell you. worth the extra 10 euro to get in there.

afterwards brain flemming, john americablog, bicyclemark and i had a nice drink at the swanky american hotel. i saw two beautiful young ladies there having a cute little drink and i kept looking over and as we were about to leave i asked

do you ladies have any dinner plans this evening?

they blushed and said yes.

and i was all cancel em.

i was all, how you say reschedule in dutch? como see deecay.

i wonder if they would have really gone dutch on our dutch date?

i should have told them id pay, being american, clearly american since there we all were in the american cafe at the american hotel.

tomorrow i get to meet Just A Girl everyones favorite black bisexual dutch blogger, who doesnt show her face on her blog.

in a few of her buzznet pics you get to see her face but maybe im just imagining that, who knows. here in amsterdam things get fuzzy. have i mentioned that its buttcold? yeah. fortunately there was a hot chick convention at the van gogh that warmed everyones spirits so much so that i ate a hot dog outside before my little bike ride over to led zeppelin square.

then we ate thai which was really good and then i rode my girls bike home (pictured, above) and passed out.

now its two am and im wondering if i should head down the block which is the start of the red light district and tell you what the red light district is like at 2am on a friday night.

lookin as pretty as me.

todays pictures

i hope im not boring you.

today i woke up early (11am) to go to museums.

two hours later im still in my room. i did this when i was in maui too.

we ate morracain and then drank in a place that used to be a hospital but is now a squat. but not just a squat, a squat bar and lil restaurant.

i dont understand the whole deal but its what i said it is. and it made you feel like you were in bladerunner.

the dj spun crazy industrial trip hop which at times was mixed with smooth jazz but oftentimes mixed with jackhammers and white noise. in some places you have to shoot the dj, and in other cases you just have to bribe him, at this place i bought him a beer and pointed at the smooth jazz disc spinning and he got the message.

bicycle mark’s roommate is lebanese but seems even more worldly than that.

the bathroom at the squat bar was immaculate. i wondered who youd call to fix the wc if something got stuck in there, and youre just a squatter.

then john americablog asked can a sqatter squat someone elses squat?

but apparently there are rules among squatters and thats the second rule.

the first rule?

dont clog the head.

its 527am and im determined to wake up at a reasonable hour and check out some van gogh and rembrant, especially since this is the 400th birthday of my man.

im addicted to shawermas. tonight i got a late night one served with a pita, like a civilized person would want it.

so let me say a few things about this hotel. its swanky downstairs, and i like the room cuz its warm and its dark and theyve got this trippy revolving door that makes you feel happy.

the shower is good, the toilet sticks out of the wall like youre in a spaceship, the bed is fine etc

but if you have a do not disturb sign on your door handle why on earth would that make someone think that it would be ok to call you saying housekeeping would you like more towels?

what if miss amsterdam would have still been sleeping?

do not disturb should mean no knocks no calls no esp

i should run every company in the world.

look at the pretty pictures

maybe it has to do with the two liters of coke that im drinking and the fact that i keep going to sleep when the sun comes up and waking up at 2:30pm. at this rate i’ll never make it inside all those museums.

they gave me a card where i can go into pretty much all the museums in town. my question is, why cant these places be open at 4am where a guy can really sit down in front of those bad boys and truly study them?

also, i dont think you should allow yourself to be considered five star if you dont have a real fridge and or a microwave in your room. i stayed in the worst motel in oregon and it had a real fridge And a microwave. yes the floors were so scary i didnt walk anywhere without my slippers but there you have it.

the lobby here is beautiful and modern. they say the huge Nightwatch is a copy but thats not what i tell my visitors.

people watch soccer here. they stand out in the cold and watch it being shown in restaurants. wednesday night soccer. you dont see people standing outside on a cold chicago spring night watching baseball. or basketball. so props.

i also like the flag of this city. its red and black and has three x’s on it.

it looks like a pirate flag. like someone saying our flag is a treasure map and we have three treasures here. sex is legal, drugs are legal, and our art is better.

i like the windy streets but i dont understand them. how did they get that way? did people build ten feet of street and then got bored of making it go straight? was it to make invading armys confused? whatever it is i like it. i feel like im on the stage of a shakespeare play.

someone offered me hash and i said, “Macbeth shall never vanquished be
until Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him.”

something is giving me munchies like crazy and if i ever moved here i would open up a Pink Dot because it’s not all that huge of a town so all youd need is three to cover the whole place. and the streets are empty at night pretty much so let people with munchies call up and ask for snacks and charge em for it.

let me tell you how much i love the world we live in.

theres a thing called peer to peer sharing.

im a subscriber to sirius sat radio. i paid for the whole year at one pop. but its only in my car radio. so i was sad that i was going to miss the howard stern show while i was on this trip.

well some very nice person started sharing yesterdays show and the day befores show. so i must say that its quite a bonus to be able to be here in this fair city And get to listen to howard late at night while watching the dutch broadcast of the olympics.

my bicycle must be freezing out there.

if you ever find yourself on a rainy day watching the documentary on woody allen’s european jazz tour “wild man blues” i hightly recommend it.

finally we see what the woodman saw in soon-yi, the same thing i saw in the teens when i was in that phase. to have a perky young woman guide you around the dark twisty alleys of old europe is a treat in itself. and sometimes i think the youngsters seek out such relationships and sometimes i think it is a blessing.

we watch as woody isnt at all taking advantage of his former step daughter and now wife, if anything we see her care for him in a manner that not only seems appealing but warranted. woody stumbles around the huge italian suite like mr maggoo having no idea where the indoor pool is or his bedroom for that matter.

i bring this up because in the olden days i had a very nice traveling companion who would do good things for us like keep me out of trouble, most of which started with my mouth. while traveling my heart opens and i end up talking to everyone. chris can tell you how a simple train ride from paris to venice ends up in an all night party with the train conductor, an aspiring model and two guitarists, where in order to get our own couchette i am enlisted to put pillowcases on pillows(!) for twenty minutes.

ashley however was the best one for me on the road as she was protective and jealous, wanting all atention and conversation to revolve around her, thus when strangers ended up talking with me for more than five minutes she would either drag me off somewhere suddenly or blatantly pout thus ending all conversations. this would keep me out of trouble. what trouble? the trouble of meeting all walks of life and the parties that they were to invite us to. the trouble of ending up drunk within an hour in a foregin land with a foreign party with a forgeign map and no phone on the first night of vacation.

or in a foreign coffee shop despite making the promise that i wouldnt go to one for fear of coming across as just another american tourist doing the typical ugly american things. i didnt know it was a coffee shop. it looked like a nice bar. and all i wanted was a pepsi.

she asked me if id like it in the bottle with a straw and i said yes. she had flat pumas, fishnets, a ridiculous miniskirt that just flopped around the hips and a pirate shirt and a nametag that had lots of a’s in it.

previously i had met some australians at a bar who had offerred me a half pot half tobacco cigarrette puff and i said nah but drank with them because they were singing and i asked them if they knew any pogues songs and they knew pretty much all of them starting with “south australia” which we sang maybe ten times. it got annoying after the third time but by the fifth time i had knocked back enough rums that i was begining to understand the words.

the general rule of thumb is you dont want to be caught in the red light district after dark but i woke up at one of the australians friends rooms. we both had our clothes on and one hand was on her ass and one hand was under the pillow that she was sleeping on. it was three am. who was this girl i thought. cute. not super cute but cute enough. what had i said to her? was that my laker hat on her blonde head?

she spoke the crazy language that i hear a lot in this city. gotta give em props for sticking with that language. whatever it is. its pretty. she whispered and followed me into the hall speaking the nice words and holding my hand.

i told her that i was hungry and heading home. and she said no no. red light district. how fucked up would it be if the only words you knew in english were no and red light district. she was saying this because in order to get to my hotel id have to walk through the famous area known for its legal prositution and illegal drug dealing and pimping.

i was hoping that it would also be famous for late night eateries, particularily something chinese. as i walked through the mazelike tiny alleyways i was tempted to smell my fingers to see if they could refresh my memory but its so cold here right now, if you remove your hands from your coat they will break right off. im getting gloves and a coat tomorrow. serious.

i ended up settling for a shawerma served not in a pita but in a french roll with french fries. a rasta man approached me as the dude was fixing my dinner and asked me if i wanted any e i said no thank you. coke? no thank you. a fat joint for a euro? uh.

and they say you shouldnt get weed from people you dont know because they might lace it with something and i always thought why on earth would people spend extra money and time to put more drugs in your drugs?

and now it’s 641am and i wish i had my teenage accompliss because she would have kept me out of trouble or she could have told me what had happened last night, but mostly she wouldnt have allowed me to pass out whenever it was that i passed out because now im up at 642, off schedule and this is how jet lag can get you.

tomorrow (wednesday) im meeting adam from sliceny, john from americablog, alice from finslippy, mark from bicyclemark and los angeles blogger mr brian flemming at Cafe Americain, at the American Hotel, Leidseplein 28 at 4:20pm so if youre in town stop by and say hola or holla or whatever it is that they say here.