Seven.

Seven days until I leave for Japan.

So today what do you get? Another map!

This one is a little more intense - it's a map of all the places I know about in Osaka. As of now, it's not much - but I'll be mapping out my travels on it.

By the time I leave it should be pretty well packed - with pictures, anecdotes, and silly stories.

Trips and Traps - the map! Read more!

Eight.

Eight days until I leave for Japan

But it won't be easy getting there - I'm looking at a full twenty four hours of travel here.

EDIT (for clarity) - it is actually when you factor in car rides, arriving to the airport early, and layovers that my travel time approaches 24 hours. Map will be edited to reflect this.

That's seventeen hours in the air - my longest flight is thirteen hours.

How will I handle a flight of that legnth? Snacks? Tetris? Airplane wine?

We shall see. In the meantime I've made a little map detailing the ridiculousness of my flight. Enjoy!


Link to Full Map

ps. Click for detail - I know tiny embedded maps can be infuriating.
Read more!

Nine.

Nine days until I leave for Japan.

I'm lucky enough to have a few oddly comprehensive Japanese language books - it is thanks to them that I present:

Japanese for Creepers

convenient phrases for creepy people

Do you believe in destiny?
Unmei-tte shinjiru?

I've been watching you.
Kimi-no-koto zutto mitetano-yo.

You're really pretty.
Kimi-tte honto-ni kawaii-ne.

I think of you night and day.
Kimi-no-koto ichinichi-ju kangaeteru-yo

What time is your curfew?
Mongen nanji?

Your lips are so soft.
Kimi-no kuchibiru-wa totemo ii-ne

Ask me anything you want except what color underwear I'm wearing.
Nani iro-no shitagi-o tsuketeruka-wa oshienai kedo. Read more!

Ten.

Ten days until I leave for Japan.

Being tall affords me a few advantages:

• I can dust shelves you've never even seen.
• I'll know if you're balding way before you ever will.
• I have a natural advantage when it comes to bird watching.
• I can raise my hand with authority.
• I'll never lose anyone in a supermarket.

When I'm in Japan I should be able to add another one to the list: scaring the holy hell out of people...

I'm 6'4. The height of the average Japanese male is 5'7.5. That would put the average Japanese male's eye level somewhere around my collar bone - making staring contests and headbutts impossible.*

So what does this mean?

Well, it's more than likely I'm going to be mistaken for a Kaiju - a giant monster** hell bent on tearing up Japan.

Japan is well practiced at dealing with Kaiju, so I should bone up on my fighting skills. They could send a giant dinosaur, robot dinosaur, or - in rare cases - a rocket turtle.

*more startling is the fact that virtually all Japanese people will be able to see up my nose... I'm going to have to start trimming my nose hair...
**that looks suspiciously like a man in a foam-rubber suit
Read more!

Vampire Underload

I just got back from my friend Haniya's pre-21st birthday potluck. There was much merriment to be had, along with a three layer chili-dip and s'more pie.

Of course bargain wine in coffee cups played a part.

I'm not in any place to write anything profound, so here's something I drew:And that's all for tonight!

11 days... Read more!

Master List for Japan

Click for detail. Read more!

13 Days

13 days until I leave

Calculating the exact number of days was probably a bad idea. Every day until I leave I'll now be counting down: 12 days... 8 days... 3 days until I ship off to a country so foreign that trying to anticipate what awaits me there is pointless.

But I'm going to do it anyway...

Snap Judgments About Japan
because I don't know any better

People: pretty, materialistic, emotionally guarded, very polite, very put together, comically emotive in social situations and stoic in professional situations

Scenery: meticulous separation of spaces, mundane architecture is fascinating to foreign eyes, fascinating architecture is fascinating

Public Transportation: clean, well thought out, baffling

Food: delicious, cheap food is cheap - everything else is expensive, consisting of ocean things I don't think of as 'food' per se

TV: mesmerizing, hyperkinetic, baffling

It will be fun to go back and amend these when I, well, do know better.
Read more!

Preparations Nearing Completion

Things I Have Done

to prepare for Japan

1. Get accepted.
2. Get passport.
3. Get certificate of entry.
4. Get visa (one year, multiple entry student visa).
5. Get a haircut.
6. Get clothes suitable to a more tropical climate.
7. FREAK THE HELL OUT

Things I Have Not Done
to prepare for Japan

1. Learn Japanese.
2. Remain Calm.
   

Read more!

Farewell to a Beard

Alright, I fixed the video. Let's hope Vimeo isn't so anal about copyrights.



Farewell to a Beard from Sam Thurman on Vimeo. Read more!

Street Food in Osaka

A friend of mine has turned me on to this short special Al Jazeera did on street food in Osaka. Best part: the reporter eats possibly deadly Fugu (poisonous blowfish) with some real Yakuza.

What does it take to get into the Yakuza? A big heart, apparently.


Read more!

Hundreth Post: Farewell, Beard

EDIT: sound is not working, due to some youtube silliness. I'll repost with another host soon.

And so today I said farewell to my beard - not with words, but instead with an electric razor. I'd elaborate but I'm getting a bit emotional... I'll just let the video do the talking:



Oh, and if it isn't working check back later - not to toot my own horn but you don't want to miss this one. Read more!

On the Eve of De-Bearding

Tomorrow's post will be my hundreth - and it will be about my de-bearding. There will be a video. Try and recall the Natalie Portman head shaving scene from V for Vendetta, then multiply that by how sad it was when Simba's dad dies in Lion King and you'll have an idea what this is going to be like.

Oh beard faithful, what a wild road it has been. I only ask that you recognize it is the man behind the beard - not the beard itself - that has kept you entertained.

And will continue to do so. Read more!

The Thurman Cafe

Today my brother and I walked to the Thurman cafe, conveniently located on Thurman street. There we looked over the menu which included "The Thurman Burger" and "The Thurmanator." Nearby a sign asked if we were man enough to "get Thurmanated."

Like they had to ask. Read more!

I am afraid of public bathrooms.

And if you were as tall as me, you would be too.

It works out like this: I enter into the bathroom and slide into a stall. I then, with the grace of a dancer close the door, lock the door, and lift the toilet lid all without using my feet. For a moment I reflect on my skill - how clever I am, locking the door with my foot . How skilled. It's at that point I realize that the stall around me is only tall enough to shield me from the nose down.

Instantly I panic. All it would take is one other tall person - perhaps one similarly disgusted by the prospect of an open-air urinal - to drop trau in an adjacent stall to urinate. I would suddenly be at eye level with a peeing man. We would never aknowledge eachother's presence, desperately trying to urinate as fast as possible and escape. Awkward.

I thought about all this as I sipped my third rum and coke - a beverage I consume mostly because I don't know enough about alchohol to get anything else - weighing this negative against the positive: my kidneys not exploding.

I wonder if the girl I was next to - a girl who referred to herself as my brothers' band's "like, only groupie or something" - could sense that I found bathroom etiquette much more interesting than how her ride like totally left her, or how shit-faced she was.
Read more!

(road) Trips

Well gang, it looks like everything is going to come to a head soon. Tomorrow I'm going to visit my brother until Sunday, then I'll prep for my trip for two weeks, then on April 7th I leave the country. Forever.*

But let's not get ahead of ourselves here. Currently I find myself possibly as far removed from the lights of Japan as possible - watching MTV in a Holiday Inn, my stomach battling a plate of chopped steak.

Chopped steak, incidentally, is totally nothing like what it sounds like.

I imagined a flank steak, medium rare, 'chopped' into slices and served alongside sauteed mushrooms. Something simple and delicious. What arrived on my plate, however, was horrible - something sinister and disgusting.

As I would learn chopped steak at its best is a depression era relic - a gravy soaked fossil from a time of foul meats and fouler gravies. Smothering a week-old hamburger batty in heavily salted gravy, onions, and mushrooms makes a lot more sense when your primary concern is the lack of unsoiled meat to cook with.

The plate that was handed to me, however, has no place in this decade. As I forked through the rancid hockey puck of salted meat in front of me I weighed my desire to not insult the waitress versus the possibility that the gray matter in front of me would find its way to my heart, take root, and kill me.

"Just think of it as protein" my mom said, sawing a chunk off the rock solid "chicken parmesan" that swam in a sea of swollen noodles in front of her.

But instead I thought of my grandmother's nursing home. The food there was worse than terrible - so bad even my 94 year old grandma could tell it was crap.

I think I once saw some poor attendant try and feed her some similarly grim chunk of reconstituted, gravied scrap-meat. Grandma was never one to take any crap. She cursed at the food, cursed at the attendant, and demanded we take her to outback steakhouse.

Good call, grandma.

*totally not true, I just have a penchant for the dramatic. I'll be back in August.
Read more!

OHIO

Tomorrow I'm going to Columbus, Ohio to visit my eldest brother Charlie. I'll be there until sunday, and I'll bring my laptop around for the ride.

What do I know about Ohio? Well... uh... didn't the Drew Carey Show take place around there? Read more!

Passport Freakout

So when I applied for my Visa they took my passport. I assume it was to help the paperwork through.

Unfortunately, I totally forgot that they had my passport. When I looked for it on my train ride home , I freaked the hell out:
text in face reads: all I can do is hope to god that it is not on a train - if it is I may have to get a new one and that would be a night-mare
Read more!

the Bearded Visa Conundrum

Due to circumstances previously elaborated on I now have a beard - ergo the above is going to be my visa picture.

This presents me with a problem: I want to shave before I leave for Japan, but my lack of beard will make me look substantially different from the picture on my visa!

So what do I do?

Keep the beard until I make it to my apartment? Bring my electric razor and rush to the bathroom to de-beard after making it through customs?

Or just go bareface and chance it? Read more!

Plans for Japan

Two of my friends and I discussed some of our goals for Japan. Here's the short list:

Joyce

• Eat everything.
  
• Buy a motor scooter with a sidecar.
• Surround self in cherry blossoms.
• Learn to ride the velocipede.
  

Ariyana

• Train one of the deer in Nara Park to be ridden.
• EAT THE DEER.
• Steal a Wagyu cow from Kobe
• BUTCHER THE COW
• Marry the resulting steak
• EAT THE STEAK

Sam

• Have two trophy wives: one rich, one talented.
• Form a three person traveling folk band.
• Travel to the subways, play
• Never alert one wife to the existence of the other (important!)
• Make lots and lots of money.
• EAT EVERYTHING!
  

Read more!

Three Books I Saved

So the house is going back on the market, which means we have to throw out all unnecessary things*. Today I went through the bookshelf in my bedroom and decided which books to keep!

The Three Books I Decided to Keep
rescued from my bedroom bookshelf

1. How to Stay Alive in the Woods Bradford Angier, 1956, 2001**
2. The Access Bible New Revised Standard Version with the Apocryphia***
3. Learning to Potty with PeeWee Potamus Samantha Smith and Maegan, 1996

*For real this time. For serious.
**Kept in hopes that I'll someday use it
***A gift from the church I grew up going to. I'm not religious, but I am sentimental.

Read more!

New Sketchbook!

I finally got a sketchbook so small I can take it anywhere:
Some excerpts: Read more!

Appropriation of a Meme

Another meme - shamelessly stolen from facebook and distilled down to its most interesting parts:


[ NOW ]
Current mood: I feel like I left Baltimore a few days before I should have. I miss that craphole a lot more than I did a week ago.
Current taste: tim tams
Current annoyance: Tim tams keep me awake, but I only want to eat them at night!
Current smell: Basement. Old carpet and older tiling.
Current desktop picture: 18th century painting of the future
Current crush: oh god I don't even know anymore

[ DO YOU.. ]
Smoke?: Never tried it.
Remember your first love?: I feel like the older I get the more I understand what "love" is
Have any gay or lesbian friends?: Of course. You probably do to, even if you think you don't.
Believe in miracles?: I always leave room for something unexpected.
Believe it's possible to remain faithful forever?: Faithful to what? I'll love strawberry shortcake until I die! Way to be ambiguous, question.
Consider yourself tolerant of others?: Tolerant? Like of people I don't like? I tend to avoid rather than confront - I'm workin' on it.
Consider love a mistake?: Love isn't a choice, so how can it be a mistake?
Like the taste of alcohol?: Like pure alchohol? The taste of burning? I do like a strong drink, sipped slow.
Believe in astrology?: Everyone needs a hobby...
Believe in magic?: It's not my nature to believe in magic.
Believe in God?: It's not my nature to believe in magic.
Have an obsession?: Food! Cats! Dogs! Nice pens! Videogames! Other countries! Finely crafted clothings! Isolation breeds obsession, I've been isolated for a while.
Have a secret crush?: always.
Have a best friend?: always
Wish on stars?: I stare at stars. Those dots are larger than any human could ever fathom. Really puts you in your place, man.

[ LOVE LIFE ]
Ever been in love?: Yes - though I think that word is a frustrating catch-all for a whole world of emotion.
Do you believe in love at first sight?: I think lust at first sight sometimes works out.
Do you believe in "the one?": The Jet-Li movie? I believe it sucked in a hilarious sort of way.
Describe your ideal significant other: Fun, smart, amazing.

[ APPEARANCE ]
Hair: Brown on head, light brown on cheeks, blond moustache - why!?
Height: 6' 4"

[ LAST THING.. ]
Bought: LIRR train ticket: Penn Station to Glen Head
Ate & Drank: Tim tams and milk (I HAVE A PROBLEM, A DELICIOUS PROBLEM)
Watched on TV: Throwdown with Bobby Flay

[ EITHER OR.. ]
beer or cider: Nothing is better than fresh cider. You can taste the apples.
cats or dogs: I... choose... BOTH. If you don't like animals I don't like you. Or you lack exposure.
gloves or mittens: Gloves. I'm glad mittens are around, though, to help lobster children feel normal.
coke or pepsi: Coke. It's all about nostalgia. Also their packaging is better.

[ WHO DO YOU WANT TO.. ]
kill: What? That won't solve anything.
look like: This guy.
avoid: ghosts

[ HAVE YOU EVER.. ]
Broken the law?: Once I stole a Powerade from an outdoor DC McDonalds. That's what they get for putting mustard on the burgers!
Run away from home?: A couple of times. Once I almost spent the night in a playground.
Been in a fight?: I think in fifth grade I put Adam in a choke hold. I don't really remember.

[ WHAT IS.. ]
Your bedroom like?: I'm not used to staying in a queen bed - I only use a little bit of it for sleeping, the rest is storage.
Your favorite thing for breakfast?: Croissant and coffee...

What's on your bedside table?: Japanese to english dictionary, camera battery charger, pens, loose paper.
What do you eat when you raid the fridge late at night?: Breakfast food!
Spontaneous or plain?: I plan things one day at a time.
What do you miss most about being little?: Not caring what other people thought about me. I'm getting back there.
Are you happy with your given name? Yes! Sam evokes pretty much all the things I'd want a name to. It's old fashioned without being pretentious - a simple good name. Thank you parents.
Do poor, homeless, or starving people sometimes annoy you?: Baltimore homeless people are the worst! New York homeless either leave you alone or have a talent.
Do you consider yourself to be a nice person?: Yes. Too nice, maybe.

Read more!

I AM NOT A MACHINE.

The best thing about going home is that I don't have to write blog posts on my iphone. The worst part is the... well... lack of people.

Leaves plenty of time to draw!

note: I'm toying with new ways of inking and coloring - I like where this one was going even if it never completely made it there.



Read more!

Baltimore Trip: last day

I end today feeling euphoric. At first this might seem strange - today didn't entail anything overtly spectacular - food with friends, relaxing by the TV, drawing a badass robot - it's just that all the pieces fit perfectly. If I could spend the rest of my life drifting through drinks and appetizers and art supplies and smart conversation with the people I love I don't think I'd ever be unhappy.

Tomorrow I'm going back to New York, where I'll be able to blog as per usual ( and sort out these 'read more' links).

This has been an amazing weekend. Tiffany, Yvonne, Nikki (not sure how to spell it, sorry!), Flora - you guys have been incredible. Thank you for welcoming me into your home, giving me a room, and generally going out of your way to make me feel comfortable. If you're ever in my neck of the woods, let me know.

And to all my other friends - those I've seen and those I didn't - I feel lucky to know so many good hearted people. When I go to Japan it's you guys I'll miss the most. Read more!

Concerning Wii Fit

Wii fit is a cruel thing. It is a game that primarily revolves around standing on a white scale and tilting yourself. It isn't fun, and it requires a fair amount of concentration.

It sits unused in the corner until alchohol enters the picture - at which point it seems like a great idea. Unfortunately it is precisely when alchohol comes into play that playing it becomes a terrible idea. Rapidly shifting your weight from side to side with pinpoint accuracy is hard enough when you're sober. Try it drunk and... just try to not hit the table on your way down. Read more!

baltimore youth

I was at the mall with my friend Kristina today. She is black (well, light brown - but, well, you know).

Group of baltimore kids:
"Hey dawg! Hey man! Yo, white dawg! You got game, man! You got you'self a black chick!? Yo, I ain't even tryin' to make fun of you or nothin! You got game!"

We could still hear them shouting as we walked away. I hope they could hear us laughing. Read more!

Back in Baltimore

So here I am, back in Baltimore. While this grimy little place frequently finds ways to be depressing I am happy to be back. I rather like it here - surrounded by my friends and my friends' cats and my dad's forty year old sleeping bag. I'm glad I took one last chance to breathe it in before I skip town.

Note: I didn't bring my computer so I'm doing this on my phone - pardon the formatting, It'll be back by Tuesday. Read more!

OUA Acceptance!

I got my acceptance letter from OUA slash certification of eligibility to enter Japan! I checked the mail today to find this swanky packet. While I dig the university's minimalist branding I have to say it's those rad Japanese postage stamps that take the cake.

Inside that envelope there was...

Another envelope! This one a bit more dour. Inside that one...An explanation of the envelope's other contents! A bit redundant, but necessary, since......this pretty little piece of bureaucracy isn't doing me any favors. Also...
Well, I'm just going to hope that's my acceptance letter. One of these days I'm really going to have to learn Japanese. Oh well, I'm one step closer!
Read more!

Editing

If I could edit my life, I would probably edit out all of the parts where I'm editing. It's fucking boring and takes forevs.

Suffice to say this video is going to take me at least another day.

Nevertheless I still found time to research Japan. Where better to start than the 90's Super Nintendo airline biz sumlator Aerobiz Supersonic!?

I'll just start my fledgling company in Osaka and...
Oh. Well screw you, Aerobiz. Stupid elitist videogame... Read more!

"makeup" Preview

I'm working on a video - "makeup" - the first in a series of instructional videos.

Preview: Read more!

Moustache Wax

Creepy Replies
to the question "what's with the moustache?"

1. It's called the "tummy tickler" - stick around and I'll show you why...
2. I call it the "hornometer" - the ends curl when I'm randy.
3. I made it out of shower drain hair. There might be a few of yours in there...
   
4. HIS NAME IS WINSLOW CHESTERFIELD AND I SHALL NOT DISCUSS HIS AFFAIRS IN POLITE COMPANY!
5. I don't know, but it tastes like children...
   

Read more!

Strange drawings?

God, I don't know. Read more!