We are whores for the internet.

Right now, as I type this, I am also chatting via IM with four other web editors from Hearst. This is noteworthy only because we are all currently resting in our hotel rooms. At the same hotel. In Kirkland, Washington. After two days and approximately eleventy million hours of meetings during which we talked about syndication and online content and sat there with our laptops all typing and and clacking and checking emails and taking notes and throwing out suggestions for future online packages and brainstorming on all things internets, we are currently all ONLINE AND TALKING TO EACH OTHER.

A smattering of our conversations from the past hour or so:

Erin: What’re you doing?
Ashley: I’m cold. And in bed. In my robe. It’s 2 in the afternoon.
Erin: Hee.
Ashley: And I just thought to myself, “I wonder what I’ll eat for dinner.” Because I haven’t eaten enough today. Or in the last two days.
Erin: I am all narfy from that lunch today.
Ashley: That lunch was just. Yeah.
Erin: I want eight grilled cheese sandwiches and a quart of tomato soup.
Ashley: I want wine.
Erin: I am not drinking anything tonight.
Ashley: I want wine.
Erin: And a gun because OH MY GOD HOW CAN YOU WANT WINE?

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Kristen: I am in bed. And possibly not moving. Ever.
Erin: Heh. Not even to go into Seattle?
Kristen: Fuck Seattle. I can watch it on Grey’s Anatomy.
Erin: We’re meeting for dinner at 7, I think. Dinner. Shower. Bed. Car. At 4:30 AM.
Kristen: Gross.
Erin: Ash is in bed. With her robe on. It’s still daylight.
Kristen: I’m not wearing pants.
Erin: I threw my bra against the wall.
Kristen: Classy.

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Eric: I am telling you right now that I am ordering room service. Because I can. And I have had nothing but lettuce for seven hours.
Erin: I am in full support of your room service ordering.
Eric: Also: Lost is on tonight. There will be much lounging.
Erin: Oh god I hope so.

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Erin: When is your effing wedding again?
Ashley: May 17
Erin: Okay. I just got invited to an event in Bath, England for Peter Gabriel. Paid for by a PR company. On May 15th. So I will be at your wedding, but I may be jetlagged. And possibly accompanied by Peter Gabriel.
Ashley: That is totally okay.
Erin: Also? I love that we’re chatting with each other from 18 rooms apart.
Ashley: Love it.
Erin: Hey, at least I’m not opening my mouth and talking.
Ashley: Ha. Yah. Love that we’re all online.
Erin: I know. Sad. But awesome.
Ashley: Exactly.
Erin: And we’re all in bed or covered in blankets.
Ashley: Hee.
Erin: Kristen just typed to me, “I can’t stop refreshing my m-effing email.”
Ashley: Me too!!!! HAHA. It’s a sickness.

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Erin: So…early dinner and then bed?
Lili: Is that a suggestion? Or an offer?
Erin: Gaylord.
Lili: Totes.
Erin: For real. Dinner. Sleep.
Lili: And only five bottles of wine tonight instead of six!
Erin: Urp.
Lili: I need a bath.
Erin: You do. How much do I love that all five of us are sitting around this hotel chatting with each other on our computers?
Lili: I know. We’re retards. And clearly in the right field. Cause we’re whores for the internet.
Erin: Hee. Ezackly.

Venga prego lo visitano. Sono solo per i compagni boozy. Bellagio non è lo stesso senza di tutti voi. Risparmi me.*

I am once again in my favorite internet + vino cafe, Bellagio Point, drinking wine, eating free meat and cheese, and generally avoiding my traveling companions, who, while LOVELY (I mean, one is my mom — she rocks), do tend to talk incessantly and they’ve lived this long, so they’re going to talk as much as they want, thank you, and if I don’t like it, I can just fuck off and do what I like, which, of course, is what I’m doing.

I was going to travel to Menaggio or Cadenabbia (that picture above was taken on the boat from Isola Comacina to Bellagio during which I drank like five small bottles of wine and stared at hot boat operators — see exhibit 1 in the background over there), but there’s really not much to do in either place and I have to be back here at 1630 to catch the 1700 ferry to Varenna and believe you me, that conversation determining timing and meeting and fuck all took at least twenty minutes because the math required to subtract TWELVE from the number 1700 is just too complex WITHOUT A CALCULATOR AND A COMPASS AND POSSIBLY A GUIDE DOG.

My mother is perfectly capable of figuring these things out on her own (she has been here several times more than I have and she hasn’t had my bossy ass around telling her where to go and what to do and she’s done just fine, thank you, as she is wont to tell me several times a day), and yet she acts as if she has never seen a clock or a map or a boat in her life and has to ask nine different people which boat to take, which route to go, what does it mean “Como-Calico” versus “Calico-Como”, etc. This is the way she does things. I would rather burn at the stake beneath a sky raining down frogs and bullets than ask someone for help figuring out a damn BOAT TIMETABLE. If I can’t figure something out, goddammit, it can’t be figured out.

Which is why I am in the internets.

Today we went to Lenno for a market (it’s basically like every New York/Chicago/Seattle/City of Your Choice street market you’ve ever been to — by which I mean it is full of crap you don’t need, you can talk the sad French-speaking African guys down about five bucks on every last thing you ever want to buy, especially if you throw out a “Parlez-vous Francais? Moi aussi!”, and you pretty much want nothing to do with anyone who is shoving past you) at which my mother inevitably winds up buying the same things every time she visits. Namely, perfume oil that is intended for an incense burner instead of her wrists, but she doesn’t care because it smells good goddammit and it comes from ITALY even though it totally DOESN’T and comes from, like MOROCCO, and she plops it all over her wrists and tells everyone she got her perfume in Lenno, and pants with elastic waists that feature pockets and tags and various other things that no one in their right minds (other than possibly Vietnam veterans) would ever want to wear. And she is happy.

I purchase nothing because I don’t need polyester underwear or a quilted jacket or a pair of shoes designed for an eighty-year-old Italian grandmother.

I did finally suck it up and buy a watch from one of the African guys (I am not being racist — they are either African or Haitian because they speak no Italian, but can muster up French if warranted, and when they talk to each other, their language is nothing I have ever heard before) because I knew that at some point during this trip, I was going to need to know what time it was in order to meet up with my mother and Susan because I knew that at some point during this trip, I was going to need to be ALONE. I talked Amatti (I think that was what he said his name was — my French is better than my Italian, but it’s still rusty) down to 13 Euros on a 15 Euro watch (it’s worth 10, really, but he wouldn’t go down to 10 — 13 was a battle), and as I watch it now, it seems to be LOSING time rather than KEEPING it. Awesome.

It looks really cute on my wrist anyway.

It’ll probably stop working thirty seconds after I get on the plane, but I don’t care. It’ll get me to the ferry on time to meet my mother and Sue. And until then, I’m going to wander around Bellagio in order to find a cafe that allows me to drink beer and smoke without running into EITHER of them.

In short, I am drunk and wandering around a small town in Italy hoping for a bar that lets me keep out of the eye of the general public.

Obviously, I am looking for a mafia bar.

Wish me luck.

* Translation: Please come visit me. I am lonely for boozy companions. Bellagio is not the same without all of you. Save me.

Stupido una lista dall’Italia.

• A two-hour delay while sitting in a lounge is FAR DIFFERENT than a two-hour delay while sitting on a plane.
• Especially when you have to pee.
• And then the stewardesses give you water.
• The fuck?
• The plane is not your bedroom. Somewhere between JFK and Greenland or wherever-the-hell we flew over, the majority of the plane had decided to make the cabin their own personal boudoir. Shoes were off, legs were flung over chair sides, snoring ensued — dudes, I know it’s a transatlantic flight and everything, but TRY and have some grace and decorum.
• I might have been one of the people with their shoes off.
• But I at least put a blanket over them.
• Crying children need to be shot full of heroin.
• And then possibly thrown off a plane.
• Or maybe it’s their PARENTS who need to be thrown off because GODDAMN.
• You can try teaching yourself Italian via computer or via class, but you will never actually LEARN it until you go there and have to figure out how to get toilet paper at the market from a woman the size of an armchair and who speaks about as much English as you speak Italian.
• The words for toilet paper are “carta igienica”.
• At least I THINK that’s what the little assistant guy said.
• I may have had three glasses of wine already.
• It was four in the afternoon.
• I know more Italian than I thought because I was able to easily get salami, cheese, coffee (for espresso, even), paper towels and English tea for my mom and Susan.
• To be fair, the words for these items are pretty much “salami”, “fromaggia”, “cafe de espresso”, “carta — for the hands?” and “te”. Not really rocket science. But my mother and Susan kept resorting to hand gestures and lots of words and I just looked right at the armchair lady and said, “Avete salami?” or “Avete provolone?”
• My mother really likes to shop.
• And by “really” I mean, “SHE WILL STAND IN THE SAME STORE FOR THREE HOURS LOOKING AT SHIT.”
• She knows this about herself — by writing this, I am not insulting her. She will read this and say, “Yes. I do. I like to look at the same stuff in the same store for hours. I do. Also? My daughter’s kind of a bitch.”
• This is why I walk away a lot.
• And go drink.
• Because I’m mean, and I have difficulty not showing EVERY emotion I have every second I have it, so if I find you or our surroundings annoying, you AND EVERYONE ELSE will know it.
• So I walk up and down hills and wander and buy cigarettes and then wind up at a bar, drinking.
• Everyone’s the happier for it, really.
• Especially when my mother winds up making friends with some American tourists who wear their pants too high and say things like, “I haven’t heard American in days — where ya from?”
• I actually left so fast that little clouds of dust raised up from my heels.
• Because my mother, in addition to shopping for days on end, will talk to anyone.
• I MEAN ANYONE.
• It is simultaneously her best and worst quality.
• I don’t talk to anyone.
• Because I hate everyone and like only myself.
• I really should be alone.
• Words I have heard before but never understood the meaning of: basta = enough, basta cosi = that’s all, vorrei = I would like, un altro = another.
• Everywhere other than Bellagio is dead on a Sunday.
• Because of God.
• Fuck God, I want cheap shoes.
• If I don’t get a beer every twenty minutes, I may kill everyone.
• Or internet. Beer or internet. Either will do.
• I now completely understand that I cannot be away from the internet for more than 8 hours.
• For god’s sake, I’d been in Italy a half hour and I was already jonesing for my favorite wine bar/internet cafe in Bellagio.
• I checked my work email only to put in my “away” message I SWEAR, then of course I checked my Gmail, and then I posted something and checked Bloglines OHMIGOD I AM CHECKING BLOGS WHILE I AM IN EUROPE SOMEONE STOP ME.
• I looked for apartments in Varenna.
• I think maybe I’m jumping the gun a bit.
• Except…Varenna rocks.
• Do you think Varenna needs a web producer?
• Will work for wine.

Ciao, Bellagio!

The last time I was in Bellagio, it was 2004 and I took this picture of the quay across from our hotel. Now its four years later, Im at the only internet cafe in town, drinking wine and of course surfing the web and posting pictures because I CLEARLY CANNOT BE AWAY FROM TECHNOLOGY FOR MORE THAN 12 HOURS.

Also? Im on a foreign keyboard, and there are no apostrophes. And its making me crazy.

I’m here with my mom, our friend Sue, and my cousins are joining us later. I have already had two glasses of wine, I plan on having another, and I made my mom and Sue go walk around so I could have some wine-fueled silence for a bit.

HA! I just found the apostrophe key! I’m cookin’ with gas, y’all. Now if I can just figure out how to wrap text around that Flickr image…
Dammit. Whereàs the mutherfuckin’ tab key_çàòp-

Stupid keyboard.

The smallest liquor store in New York.

My mother is in New York.

Yes, you should all be afraid.

She’s in town with her friend Sue and the three of us are flying to Italy on Friday to meet up with some friends and our Canadian cousins for a little wine and George Clooney because we’re going to Bellagio and George is having us for dinner at least twice. And Renee is not invited because she’s a lemon-sucking bitch.

I know. We’re very glamorous.

So I asked my mother to meet up with me and my friends at the rooftop bar of the Hotel Metro on 35th, but it was closed due to the fact that SPRING HAS NOT YET ARRIVED IN NEW YORK, and so we sat in the dismal hotel bar and had a couple rounds and I think my mother and Sue were both horrified and amused by us and how filthy-yet-cute we can be in mixed company.

Sue and my mom headed off to dinner and I headed home via bus because I have tons of work to do before I leave. On the way home, I stopped by the SMALLEST LIQUOR STORE IN NEW YORK on York Avenue to pick up some prosecco for a little cocktail party tomorrow night. And in this store, there were three men. Wait. I’m sorry. There were four men. Only one of them was purchasing liquor. The other three? WORKED THERE.

The store is about the size of my kitchen/office. So, you know, NOT BIG. Why in the HELL were there three men working there? There was a guy hovering near the door who opened it for me as I entered. I thought he was an exiting customer. Nope. Just the…door opener. Because a store this small NEEDS a door opener. There was the guy at the register, who smiled at me as I came in, but was later rather rude to me and acted as if I was stealing wine from him instead of buying it. And then there was the creeper at the back with the hairy mole on his cheek who seemed to be responsible for restocking the shelves and generally hovering around in order to make customers uncomfortable because THIS IS A SMALL STORE AND HAVING YOU STARE AT ME AS I LOOK FOR WINE IS NOT MAKING ME WANT TO STICK AROUND, FREAK-O.

I ignored all of them and went to the cooler in the back to see if they had cold prosecco, but didn’t see any, and realized that I didn’t need it for tonight, so I didn’t need it cold. I inched my way up the “aisle” that barely contained me and my woman hips, and found a warm bottle on the shelf. I picked it up and the Creeper was all, “You need dat cold?” Um, no, HILLSIDE STRANGLER MOLE GUY, I don’t. Thanks anyway!

I dropped the wine on the counter and the door opener quickly bagged it while the cashier, who was probably the store owner, glared at me as if his parents had made the prosecco and I had just ripped it from their arms as they lay on their deathbeds. I tried smiling, but apparently, a smile signifies “joy at your parents demise” so he did not return the smile.

I signed the bill, the door opener handed me the triple-bagged single bottle of prosecco and then moved around the counter the size of a postage stamp and opened the door for me because I DON’T KNOW HOW TO.

This may all seem like service you are supposed to receive at any given liquor store, but when you’re one woman in a store you can barely fit in surrounded by three men who alternately drool at you and hate you, it’s really service I’d rather not receive.

IT’S ABOUT AS LARGE AS MY MONITOR. Are three men really necessary? Three really creepy men?

I am never going back there.

Unless they have a sale on prosecco.

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