Back from Greece
Jul. 20th, 2004 02:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_dividedI'm back. See last two entries for fan stuff I did while away.
I won't bore anyone with the details, except to say that both the house and island of Antiparos where we stayed were beautiful and that I had a great time. Instead, I'll put those details and some more photographs up on a website and then post the link here.
Tom Hanks. Where better to gloat about meeting major celebrities than in livejournal? Gloat, gloat, gloat.
It was while waiting in Pounda (isle of Paros) for the car ferry back to Antiparos. I heard him before I saw him; it was instant recognition because he speaks exactly like he does in all his movies. Well, all of them but that silly recent one were he's a villain with a bad accent and worse mustache. He also looks exactly the same, but taller.
So of course I walked past him as if I didn't know that he was my favorite actor ever. What was I going to do, interrupt? My grandpa (or, as Hanks said in Greek, my papou) broke the ice. He wanted to talk about the movie with the pooch. Grandpa likes movies with animals. He also asked whether "that old house still falling down, you and the lady ever fix 'em up?" From The Money Pit, which is obscure. Hanks said, "He knows all my movies!"
Alex (my brother) and I approached. I asked about his conversation with Grandpa, and where he was staying, and whether he knew a lot of Greek or just some. Then we talked about football (soccer). Greece played in the Euro Cup finals that very evening, an event so miraculous that the next day French-language newsaper Le Figaro called their victory "La miracle des Deuix" (The miracle of the Gods). Go Team Greece! Good luck at the Games!
Hanks asked where we were from and did we like our stay and in general was very easy to talk to. I have exactly one picture which still needs to be developed.
What else? He introduced himself to us saying, "Hi, I'm Tom." He had a firm handshake. He fixed his hair in the reflection of a Coke machine. His Greek relatives drove a festively-decorated beat-up Jeep while he had a large shiny black SUV. He has a daughter my age and a son who's younger. He made Grandpa very happy and is the nicest movie star ever.
While we were talking to him at the dock, Dad was taking spy footage with the telephoto lens from across the water. He positioned himself so it would look like he was filming my mother. He did this on the ferry, too, when Hanks and family were standing a few benches away.
I'm really sorry I didn't ask for an autograph for Oliver, but it didn't occur to me until too late, and anyway, I didn't have any paper or a pen. I ended up getting lots and lots of Ouzo (Greek whiskey) for him instead, which, in retrospect, was a very tasteless thing to do.
Only half of my time in Greece was spent day-tripping with my family; for the other half I swam in the Mediterranean and read on the beach. I got a tan the old-fashioned way. I also finished Catspaw, the Assasin Fantastic, The Fifth Elephant, American Gods, The Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft, and Fugitive Pieces. The first three were fun but forgettable, although The Fifth Elephant may be my new favorite Discworld novel. V, do you want the Fantastic?
I'm tired of talking about Gaiman. Of Lovecraft, I can only say that while it was a real struggle at first, I think that now I understand why so many people are obsessed by him. It's the Wayside Stories effect. I liked his cities but disliked his monsters and always "undescribable" horrors. No Cthulu in this book, which I suppose means I'll have to read another.
I LOVED Fugitive Pieces. Anne Green, the author, has won awards for her poetry. This book is poetry in novel form, and parts are so beautiful/poignant/true that I was sorry to have had to leave it behind. It's about the Holocaust (more accurately, its aftermath), which normally means that I'd only want to read it once. Not because it's sad, although that's true as well, but because I have so many books about the Holocaust already. My grandmother used to give them to me for New Year's and Channukah, at least three a year.
An excerpt:
The sun is jagged through the trees, so bright the spangles turn dark and float, burnt paper, in my eyes... The forrest floor is speckled brown, sugar carmelized in the leaves. The branches look painted in the onion-white sky. One morning I watch a finger of light move its way deliberately toward me across the ground.
I know, suddenly, my sister is dead. At that precise momment, Bella becomes flooded ground. A body of water pulling under the moon.
Anything else interesting that has to do with the trip, but is too inappropriately personal to go on a website, might end up here. In the meantime, perhaps you guys can help settle a bet:
Large Image File for Greatest Possible Level of Detail
This is the pufferfish keychain I bought in Parikia. I say it's a real pufferfish, encased in plastic. My brother insists it's a model, even after I told him the story of the jade leaves. Tell him that he's wrong for me?
I won't bore anyone with the details, except to say that both the house and island of Antiparos where we stayed were beautiful and that I had a great time. Instead, I'll put those details and some more photographs up on a website and then post the link here.
Tom Hanks. Where better to gloat about meeting major celebrities than in livejournal? Gloat, gloat, gloat.
It was while waiting in Pounda (isle of Paros) for the car ferry back to Antiparos. I heard him before I saw him; it was instant recognition because he speaks exactly like he does in all his movies. Well, all of them but that silly recent one were he's a villain with a bad accent and worse mustache. He also looks exactly the same, but taller.
So of course I walked past him as if I didn't know that he was my favorite actor ever. What was I going to do, interrupt? My grandpa (or, as Hanks said in Greek, my papou) broke the ice. He wanted to talk about the movie with the pooch. Grandpa likes movies with animals. He also asked whether "that old house still falling down, you and the lady ever fix 'em up?" From The Money Pit, which is obscure. Hanks said, "He knows all my movies!"
Alex (my brother) and I approached. I asked about his conversation with Grandpa, and where he was staying, and whether he knew a lot of Greek or just some. Then we talked about football (soccer). Greece played in the Euro Cup finals that very evening, an event so miraculous that the next day French-language newsaper Le Figaro called their victory "La miracle des Deuix" (The miracle of the Gods). Go Team Greece! Good luck at the Games!
Hanks asked where we were from and did we like our stay and in general was very easy to talk to. I have exactly one picture which still needs to be developed.
What else? He introduced himself to us saying, "Hi, I'm Tom." He had a firm handshake. He fixed his hair in the reflection of a Coke machine. His Greek relatives drove a festively-decorated beat-up Jeep while he had a large shiny black SUV. He has a daughter my age and a son who's younger. He made Grandpa very happy and is the nicest movie star ever.
While we were talking to him at the dock, Dad was taking spy footage with the telephoto lens from across the water. He positioned himself so it would look like he was filming my mother. He did this on the ferry, too, when Hanks and family were standing a few benches away.
I'm really sorry I didn't ask for an autograph for Oliver, but it didn't occur to me until too late, and anyway, I didn't have any paper or a pen. I ended up getting lots and lots of Ouzo (Greek whiskey) for him instead, which, in retrospect, was a very tasteless thing to do.
Only half of my time in Greece was spent day-tripping with my family; for the other half I swam in the Mediterranean and read on the beach. I got a tan the old-fashioned way. I also finished Catspaw, the Assasin Fantastic, The Fifth Elephant, American Gods, The Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft, and Fugitive Pieces. The first three were fun but forgettable, although The Fifth Elephant may be my new favorite Discworld novel. V, do you want the Fantastic?
I'm tired of talking about Gaiman. Of Lovecraft, I can only say that while it was a real struggle at first, I think that now I understand why so many people are obsessed by him. It's the Wayside Stories effect. I liked his cities but disliked his monsters and always "undescribable" horrors. No Cthulu in this book, which I suppose means I'll have to read another.
I LOVED Fugitive Pieces. Anne Green, the author, has won awards for her poetry. This book is poetry in novel form, and parts are so beautiful/poignant/true that I was sorry to have had to leave it behind. It's about the Holocaust (more accurately, its aftermath), which normally means that I'd only want to read it once. Not because it's sad, although that's true as well, but because I have so many books about the Holocaust already. My grandmother used to give them to me for New Year's and Channukah, at least three a year.
An excerpt:
The sun is jagged through the trees, so bright the spangles turn dark and float, burnt paper, in my eyes... The forrest floor is speckled brown, sugar carmelized in the leaves. The branches look painted in the onion-white sky. One morning I watch a finger of light move its way deliberately toward me across the ground.
I know, suddenly, my sister is dead. At that precise momment, Bella becomes flooded ground. A body of water pulling under the moon.
Anything else interesting that has to do with the trip, but is too inappropriately personal to go on a website, might end up here. In the meantime, perhaps you guys can help settle a bet:
Large Image File for Greatest Possible Level of Detail
This is the pufferfish keychain I bought in Parikia. I say it's a real pufferfish, encased in plastic. My brother insists it's a model, even after I told him the story of the jade leaves. Tell him that he's wrong for me?
