Long Beach A&P

After 5 months on the Atlantica, now a week at sea in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja, California, with CCL.

I am docked  right beside the Queen Mary. The last time I was on that ship, I was doing extra work on the TV Show, the X-Files, playing a Nazi Storm Trooper. Nothing really has changed. As Joesph Goebbels said, "the bigger the lie, the more believable"-so Yes The Mexican Riviera isn't just good, it is too good!

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Puerto Vallarta- A MexiCAN and an AmeriCAN´T

Consumer Spending-Born Again

Puerto Vallarta is a working class heros adventure. If PV is a business, it is Wal-Mart — it is trying to be the lowest-priced product in the market. The Wal-Mart school of Tourism--- The less people pay, the more they enjoy it.  In fact, they have one of the largest Wall Mart Super Centers I have ever seen in México; and Sams Club is right next door, monuments to the trend. The experience is experienced. There is a Wal-Mart on the tour!

The $5 Wal-Mart polo shirt…is a possible dream, so are the  humble products for the Family Guy, where the Hombres perform women’s work without losing their authority, and in the trenches  service workers can squeeze dignity and meaning from the lemon of their  labors. The American Dream may be vaporized, but south of the border, the dream continues with emerging money.

The last time I was in the Amigo Country, was February. Cozumel is sooooo different.

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Santa Monica-Whip It Good

The future is full of possibilities that I must constantly shoot in the head, because if you want something GR8, you must be able to limit yourself.

 Normal people  need three things to travel-Time, Money and Opportunity.

As an abnormal person doing abnormal things---It has never been about resources. You see, I am the Bobby Fisher of resourcefulness, the Cosmo Kramer of planning , the Curious George of predictable unpredictability. >note to self< Rock on man with the yellow hat, rock on.


No matter how low the budget bar gets, I always manage to limbo my way under it. If you think about it, I am the Wilt Chamberlain of shoe-string  travel. I'm putting up numbers so unthinkable that normals will never, ever reach them.-300 ports in 365 days.

Why Be A Man When You Can Be A Success?
As the Morgan Freeman of travel writers , if you will. Everyone recognizes me but I never gain any due recognition., Hotel @nyware hasn't exactly  been the Edgar Allen Poe of knock-outs, the Emily Dickinson of ground n pound, the Robert Frost of ass-kicking.

It's just me, born with a Ph.D. in throwing junk up against the wall, and seeing what will stick.Looking back, it's been the Colonel Kurtz of experiences. I've gone native and insane so many times, but in a Lance Armstrong Barbara Bush sort of way. Sometimes I am the census taker, sometimes, the cannibal psychiatrist.  Roll Tape...

My Top Ten World Tour 2010 YouTube Videos

When a good time turns around, You must whip it , You will never live it down, Unless you whip it.  No one gets their way, Until they whip it-Devo 

 
#1 BUI: Embracing The Life Forced Upon Me--OMG! WTF? I have nothing in common with myself anymore


#2: Insulin Shock and Awe, eating the Celebrity Solstice


#3.Acropolis Now-Ed Reif and James Hopkins; making the world safe for Hypocracy..er ..I mean Democracy in the cradle of Western civilization---Athens, Greece


#4 Buddha Boy Ed Reif ---From Monk to Millionaire--- in Sint Maarteen--It ain't much if it ain't Dutch

Success is continued enthusiasm despite failure after failure

#5.The Importance Of Being Ernest (Hemingway) without having ever read him-Never go on trips with anyone you do not love

#6 You(th) are as young as your spine is flexible.

#7 What color is your Parachute Money?

#8 I am at one with the chainsaw. British Virgin islands

#9 Have A Cigar-And did we tell you the name of the game, boy We call it Riding the Gravy Train.

#10 Put That Coffee Down-Ed Reif, former NYU classmate of Alec, and Starter for Team Baldwin, votes for Starbucks today, where life changes instantly, as he drinks from a paper cup.

Honorable Mention

#1   Regular-- Kissing a stingray while being filmed in Grand Cayman Islands Extra Crispy- Going out old school Steve Irwin Style-Being fatally pierced in the chest by a stingray barb while filming in GB Reef

#2 Eminem has 8 Mile, Bob Marley, the small village of 9 mile... Bob,just sMILE.

#3 Container Cargo Cult Madness

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Los Angeles-I Need My Space

Space Travel Sure Is Fun

Just spent the weekend walking on the moon, Now @Top Gun School, where unlike Maverick, I am writing checks that my body can still cash.

Tranquility Base, The Ego Has Landed.

Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)

My Starbucks card still had $5 bucks loaded  on it. I am drinking coffee from a paper cup again @ SBUX Pacific Palisades. Neil Young's lyrics resonate,speaking directly over the sound system

"I crossed the ocean for a heart of gold, and I'm getting old'

I suppose growing old isn't optional, but growing up is. Spending a perfectly useless morning in a perfectly useless manner, I have learned to live. Seinfeld is a show about nothing; Ed TV is about the sweetness of doing nothing.

Your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash (James Tolkan in Top Gun)

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Germany-Boats And The Men That Love (on) Them

Loose Lips Sink Ships 

Love Boat Theme, n  

  Love is in the air...Well, not only in the air but also    in the sea!

Passengers who search for romantic nights aboard a beautiful ship traveling to tropical or mysterious countries, spend  their vacation aboard the "Love Boat" where Gopher, Dr.Adam, Isaac, Julie and Captain Stubing try their best to please them and sometimes help them fall in love.

Wish You Were Here

 After a year at sea, on 4 cruise ships, and 300 ports of call, did I tell you the name of the game?

I think I´ll Have A Cigar.

I would like to thank Pedro Pablo Peña, from Old San Juan, who took a chance on an unknown Vegan/ Endurance athlete with off-the-chain VO2max scores, and sold him his first El Borinqueño cigar.

I accept the the Phillip Morris Throat Kazoo Newbie Award , in a COPD tobacco catagory in the name of all those who have given there time, money and lives to the industry!

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Oslo-On The Waterfront

Mind and Matter
The Environmentally Friendly Euro Takes The Nordic Plunge

Don't Panic. We're Organic

Everything you want in a city and less---ocean kayaking, mountain biking, sailing The Fjords---I am on Autopilot, here in ECO-EURO friendly Oslo, going green,  drinking fair trade coffee, and planning my trip back to la-la land, the city of Los Angry Cars, Los Angeles. Here is the Oslo Opera house greening the skyline with its low impact visual intrusion.

Sully Who? Welcome to A La Carte Air. A New Sky Guy Has Arrived
AA Pilot Chelsey-Miracles on the Hudson- Sulenberger is out and The Jet Blue-take this job and shove it- Guy Slater is in. If God wanted us to fly he would have given us tickets--Ships and the men who love them will be a future post but the friendly skies are calling.

Airplanes are like diets, I don't like to go on them!  It's natures way of making you look like your passport photo. My 'once around without leaving the ground' mantra, is going arero-dynamic, flying without feathers, as I am headed for cOPENhagen bound for LAX on a Luftansa flight. I have decided to give avaition and airline food another chance.

We have clearance Clarence. Roger, Roger. What's our Vector Victor?

Location : Rådhusgata 32B, 0158 Oslo,

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Stavanger-I´m Not (all) There

Jumping The Shark In Norway 

Why Climb a mountain? because it is there.What I would really like to do is  Bungee jump--- dive off the top  of this cliff because I am not all there, This would be my version of Happy Days, when Fonzie jumped the shark. That defining moment when you know your favorite TV program has reached its peak.

If Hollywood is loneliness beside the swimming pool, then Norway is solitude by the fjords.What\s on Norway? Ed TV... Time to change the channel.

Here are my top posts from this awesome place.

 The Geirangerfjord-Mother Nature and Father Time Are Effing Special

Oslo-You Know Where It's @

Norway's Western Fjords-The Eloquent Sounds of Silence

As Allan Watts said, Everyday, you have to go out of your mind in order to come to your senses. A fool, afterall, who persists in his folly, becomes wise. I haven\t been everywhere, but it is on my list. After all, when you come to a fork in the road, take it.

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Flåm -Nothing Happens Next

What happens in Norway stays in Norway. Just add water.

Chasing the cascading waterfalls. They are everywhere. This kind of leisure is a form of silence, not noiselessness, a divine Viking mystery- H20 and gravity. Norway is blessed with these glaciated valleys and fjords. This is the place of a thousand waterfalls.

Location : 5743 Aurland,

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Geiranger-The Last Samurai Of Love

Ask A Ninja Elephant

There is a certain comfort in the space of the fjords, neither past nor future. Somewhere between messy-mundane daily living and staged ephiphanies, comes God's only voice-silence.

If I try to English this, I don't feel the pain of loneliness, but the joy of solitude, and the glory of being alone.

The way of the warrior is the way of death. Sometimes you have to be seperated from people you love. And you realize that you cannot truely love someone you cannot live without.

Ninja love is invisable, a symptom of maturity.It is not the kind of devotion that says I love you because I need you. It is the other way around. I need you because I love you. Samurai coeurage, doing it with heart, is not the absence of fear but the understanding of it.

Authentic love comes from being able to walk away like a Samurai, without attachment. Loving from strength and independence is always allowing yourself the ability to go away, and die the death of your own love.

How do you love in that way? How do you eat an elephant? ONE BITE AT A TIME.

Location : 6216 Stranda,

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Denmark- Eat, Pray and Reif

Mid Life Chrysler Travel by proxy

Let’s pretend, for purely rhetorical purposes, that I—an American male journalist—got a 200K book advance to find God, write a travel book about a quest for sensuality and spiritual growth.  I would call it Eat, Pray and Reif, also known as Drink, Play, F@#k, One Mans search for Everything in France, Macau and Thailand. Wouldn't it just scream out,  blatantly male “mid-life crisis narrative”.

I start by going to France, where I eat a lot of Quiche , drive around and take some power  naps. I also study Franglaise with a cute, younger French woman named Isabelle, and think to myself, how nice it would be if the American women in my life had had the awareness to treat men in all the French ways.

Then I take a red eye flight  to Macau for three months of debauchery on the Hong Kong Express , Finally, over to Thailand, the land of smiles...before I get my Baht back to the United States of Unconsciousness.

You get the picture, right? It is the last 24 months of my life, documented  here at this blog, Hotel @nyware!

Meow

But if I were named Edna (which ironically emeans pleasure)instead of Ed, I could right EPL, Eat Pray, Love and got on the NYT bestseller, huh?  because it  seems honest and soulful when distilled through the sensibilities a woman.

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Russia, Press The Reset Button

Googling Capitalism

I just realized-the Soviet Union no longer exists, that Europe has changed, and that new powers like China, Brazil and Mexico have emerged as important players in the Global Supermarket.

Here in the Baltics,  Czarist St Petersburg and Commie Leningrad are not even on speaking terms.  They have agreed to see other people-foreigners. In Fact, Modern Sankt Petersburg, verison 3.0 is just another friendly Baltic port.

This invented city and capital of imperial  Czarists Russia is a klepto architorture melange of Venice, Amsterdam and Paris. The nazi dropped  over 6000 bombs on the city, so most of the place is a re-built cut and paste, R&D, (Ripoff and Duplication), DIY (Do It Yourself)Stew.

The cultural heart of Russia, it is the San Francisco of Moscow, where chicks like to wear high heels, and sport flowers in their hair. Full of psychic over kill, and the Napolean short-mans complex, if the fountains of Versailles are elegant, then a field of water canons that span two aircraft carries must be better.  Quantity is its own kind of quality. For instance, the food, could kill a Russian circus bear. My favorite meal--seconds!

I walk by a t shirt shop "Buy Me Things" says it all. The nail that stands up doesn't get hammered down-It drives a BMW and talks on a black market Iphone. Minted with human capital, St Pete should have no trouble being the Geekfathers of their own piece of Silicon Valley heaven. This place is wired.

Mother Russia. Six months of depression, followed by seven month of disappointment

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Tallinn Mappery-Deconstruct This!

Adult Swim From Mouse To Mermaid

Welcome to Euro Disney, er I mean Estonia, Another Daytastic time in the childhood euphoria and Snow Whites Magic Kingdom, Staging Athenticity and Encounters. It takes a village, and I feel like a global villager on two legs, doing the backstroke in the waters of the Santa Claus Industry  today as Big Brother looks on. Visiting countries is as easy as picking up the phone. I am a multinational soul.

These castles, and ppl dressed up in period costumes bring the colonization of our beloved American theme parks to Tallinn.It is a kind of boot camp for Scandanavians and Baltic types, getting their wallets ready for The happiest places on earth-Anaheim and Orlando. Great marketing guys! Basically everyone has two homes, the place they grew up with and America. I get it. ONE MARKET UNDER GOD.

Taking a Summer ferry ride from Finland or Stockholm over  here, is a new religion for urban elites. If you bring  a  willing suspension of disbelief, plus a willing suspension of reality itself, this is a well preserved tourist trap and UNESCO World Heritage top destination offering  the sacrement of Faith...In fact, this place is full of it.  Especially when traveling in a group. Want to get lost in the globalization maze, ride the empowerment roller coaster, or just sit down and relax, sipping a 4 Euro cup of coffee and enjoy the Spectacle.  There's something for everyone as the experience is experienced.

New Ephiphany: America, a country of immigrants, exiles and new comers, is the ideal place for the privlidged homeless. I am taking prisoners!

I have said it all before...

The march of stupidity and the routines of tourism are even more monotonous than those of daily life.

In an excursion, when you are always sure of reaching your destination, where everything is so well arranged, souvenir shops sell made-in-China-junk,(adding drywall to the tainted pet food and lead-painted toys), taking a tour is a kind of self induced torture, like going on a wild stuffed animal safari, with stupid rules like Do not feed the animals and No flash photography applying. When you have taken enough of these tours, however,each additional one you may ever take again, is both unbearable and trifling.

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What's On Stockholm? Ed TV

A View From The Cheap Seats

"You're not going to see people like this again for a long time", he said and I said "I always see people like this"and he looked at me for a moment and said, "You're not from around here, are you?" Stockholm today

Embracing the life forced upon me, I have had nothing to do and all day to do it. An accident of birth, being born in the USA, I won the geographically-desirable-places-to-live-on-the-planet lottery, and have squandered my inheritence in the United States of Unconsciousness, a shared hallucination of the three C's--- Cash, Condos and Cars and the three P's---Pills, Poker and Porn. This sort of instant gratification takes too long.

I am traveling  to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people I ignore at home or  on Facebook and Twitter and Blogger.

An adventure is something more but nothing less than bad planning.I want to go once around without leaving the ground-by sea and land.  It has been weeks since I have been able to get anywwhere else but Scandanavia, and the more I realize that I am getting farther away from my destination, the more I realize that the trip is the destination.

I know both sides because I am both sides: a tourist who doesn't know where I've been; a traveller who doesn't know where he's going. I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list. I thought college was the longest vacation I ever took; but this Graduate School seamester is a kind of study abroad in Nomadic Pursuits.

Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy a $5 cup of coffee that I drink from a paper cup, which is kinda the same thing. Sitting in an ephiphany chair at Starbucks last May in Indianapolis, I came to the conclusion--- freedom comes from doing what has been done to you--being born in America is being kidnapped and sold into slavery. Even though The grass isn't greener on the other side, it's greener where you water it. I said "I am outta here. Any place but here, and I want to be suprised everyday"

With every wish...What happens in Vegas now happens in China


 I won and lost The American Dream , gambling one weekend in Macau.

A miracle is a shift in thinking-when everything is gone anything is good. Shift happens-- I sense the miracle of life in loss, and behind it my bread and butter accomplishments fade to trivia.

When you are at your weakest, the lowest ebb is the turn of the tide. Make it up, make it up so good that it will happen. State it, then create it. Before you can take your path you must live it in thought. You become your own best ex. You have nothing in common with yourself....things happen to you that you don’t know yourself. Cool, unlying life rushes in.

When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yes in yesterdays on the road.

Procrastinate now! Infinite patience brings imediate results.Change is instant; geting ready for change however takes forever.

Every tooth in a man's head is more valuable than a diamond, wrote Miguel de Cervantes-Think Don Quixote. It certainly is! Just had a root canal today in Stockholm-Why pay less?

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