Algiers Walking Tour (and the metro, too)

Day One: I took a city tour, guided by a young college-age Algerian woman. She'd clearly watched a lot of YouTube propaganda, but she was also kind of aware of the wider world. Just a little. She had some really bizarre ideas about a certain country--I tried to reason her out of them, but she was pretty far down the conspiracy path. 

In the evening, my local guides picked me up and drove me to the airport, for my short flight from Algiers to Constantine.

In Algiers

I'm repeatedly pulling back the dusty sheer curtain over the balcony door as I try to get some air in this stuffy hotel room, three flights up, hoping the pigeons stay on the balcony and not try to visit me in the room. 

Seagulls call to each other over the rusting satellite dishes, perched on the cracked painted 1930s concrete so many call home. Feral kittens play and occasionally yowl on the street below. The smell of diesel mixes with the whiff of cigarette smoke. 

Remember cigarettes? They still live here, right off the Mediterranean. 

Where the Mediterranean diet means something different. A local hotel breakfast buffet offers croissants, pain au chocolat, sliced white bread, brown muffins, vanilla muffins, French bread, pastries, and cookies. I’ve never seen so many carbs...

Except of course when I traveled to the Middle East and North Africa. Hard-boiled egg, a container of yogurt, cheese in a foil triangle, and eight types of bread. 

 I haven’t missed it. 

I feel a pang of nostalgia for simpler times when eating bread didn’t equal regret. 

Good thing I took so many packets of peanuts from work.

Kind of Like Pizza Hat

Some reputable shops in this part of the world!

I'm at the combination Domino's McDonald's taco stand!

Arrival in Algiers Airport

Algiers. I have arrived.

Work and Fun in One Trip

Packed for both Algeria AND Sweden. I had to buy a new bag, my carry-on can only deal with one climate at a time.

Why Sweden? A convention! And I never go to a convention overseas without checking out a destination on my own either before or after. This time, it's Algeria before Stockholm Con.

And I received this in a newsletter today! How timely. 

Vanity In Flight

I can watch myself at 40,000 feet. I'm interviewed in the documentary on the left. 

I won't, because like most everyone else, I don't know how to react to video of myself. But I could. Which is both kind of fun but also weird.

Progress in Pottery Class

I tried a combination of the glaze "lipstick purple" over "brilliant black." 

It came out nicely. The blue tape shows where the glaze dripped. I'll have to grind that off.

A Special Day In JC

Apparently it's National Opossum Day! 

 I like opossums. They eat bugs in my yard.

This opossum is eating cat food, not bugs. 

Halloween at the Office

Sometimes I think he’s too accepting.

Just Say No

I went to see writer Sean Howe talk about his new book tonight, over in Echo Park. I thought it would be a record of the magazine HIGH TIMES but the book is about its enigmatic founder, Thomas King Forcade, who was a radical in the seventies, or possibly a grifter, who can really say? Anyway, it reminded me how in the seventies there would be smoke-ins on the national mall, and how pot was everywhere in those days and was nearly legalized under the Carter years. This isn't a book about pot, though, that's just part of the story.

Of course, the Reagan era was coming and the world was about to change a whole lot. Anyway, the book sounded great so I was fortunate enough to buy the last copy at the bookstore and get Sean to sign it.

But you know what makes this book extra-special? Cover art by Bill Sienkiewicz! (Sean let me have one of the posters.)