Blogs & Fiction. By Max Milano.
They call it middle age, as if a second half is guaranteed. I'd chosen to ignore my own impending appointment with this existential milestone until a message on my Samsung brought reality crashing down.
Harry was dead.
We'd gone to high school together in the 1980s and caroused in the early 1990s as grunge kids with Nirvana T-shirts and Doc Martens boots.
"Harry died of a heart attack," my friend Pat is talking from the other end of a video call, "he was only 53."
In the shadowy depths of Prague's history lies the Kino Roxy, a place with a past as dark and complex as the city itself. Once owned by the Jewish community, this cinema became a hub of culture and entertainment when it was opened in the 1920s.
The Ice Storm. A Beat Poem by Max Milano Plus A Shakespearean Iambic Pentameter.
We're climbing up high and at a fast speed. Our rented Nissan Kicks is living up to Avis' motto and is, indeed, 'trying harder.' I've had 'pedal to the metal' ever since leaving the last working-class colonias that cling to the dusty foothills on the edge of Mexico City's polluted thin air, and now we're high up in the pine-forested slope of a 17000-foot mountain.
Teotihuacán. We park as close to the looming black Pyramid of the Sun as the dirt parking lot allows. We've just broken through a crowd of touts wearing official-looking high-visibility vests into the calm of the parking lot at the base of the black pyramid that rises above the dry land like a determined hill. It's eight in the morning, and the sun has just risen above the cuboidal flat tip of the pyramid. Sunrays spill down the pyramid's steps like heads lopped off by the obsidian-encrusted clubs favored by the Mexicas to dispatch human sacrifices to the gods.
Charlie don't surf
But he thinks he should
In Pismo Beach
He won't stop
Till he does damage
Cause Charlie don't surf
But he thinks he should
It's ten to midnight in Paris. 2015 is due to expire at the top of the hour, and only the hardened and foolish are out hitting the bars of the Bastille district.
My fiancée, Monica, and I had earlier in the evening left the foolish at a packed Australian pub on Rue de la Roquette, opting instead for a seedy joint called "Objectif Lune" located just a few doors down. The bar's name is the only Tintin reference to be found inside because both the decor and the clientele seem to be doing their best to answer a casting call for a 1980s Luc Besson movie: Leather jackets, wild punk hairdos, graffiti on the walls, and shabby multiethnic chic all around.
We order two shots of clear Pastis with Belgian beer chasers. You can always get Belgian beer in Paris, even in the grittier bars of Rue de la Roquette (a narrow street with rows of bars, sushi joints, and cafés that runs from Place de La Bastille to Boulevard Voltaire, and eventually up to the main gates of Père Lachaise cemetery).
Monica seems to have Père Lachaise on her mind tonight. She keeps talking about a poem she's writing about Père Lachaise's many illustrious guests, like Jim Morrison and Chopin, between her sips of Belgian Saison. But Monica's not a writer; she's an actress. You've probably seen something she's in—a little something called The Show. A sleeper hit that's become the hottest streaming show on the planet…Read More
Part I Valle de los Caídos
The summer air in Madrid is immobile. It just hangs there, smothered in cigarette smoke and car fumes. Not a breeze to stir the smoke. Not even at night. Only that at night it's worse because everyone smokes like its going out of fashion. Perhaps it's the altitude. Madrid is the highest capital in Europe, after all. It sits right in the middle of the high Castilian plain like a golden oasis in a vast rocky desert…Read More
You don't come to Spain for the beer. That much is a well-established truth. In fact, you tend to forget about beer altogether during the first few days of your visit to Spain. That's because their wine is so good and so well priced. When you can get a marvelous bottle of Tempranillo while sitting al-fresco in a medieval plaza over a dish of black paella, then beer takes the back seat. Mainly because the said bottle of marvelous Tempranillo costs the same as a glass of plonky house wine back home…Read More
The mountain is a layer cake of dirt, pines and a wall of glaciers and black rock rising right up to the volcanic summit. The pimple of god. Visible from 150 miles away on a clear day. An active volcano. Ready to blow and wash all the sins away as far as the eye can see…Read More
