Get a bamboo tattoo in a bar on a tropical Thai island -- check

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According to Ryan Dudzinski and Ollie White, I have strange luck. Like, very good luck. I buy that. I guess I just never thought about it.

Ryan thinks its lucky that I can go couch surfing and not get murdered. Or travel wherever I feel like without ever making arrangements. I wouldn't consider that luck, exactly. Most people don't get murdered. And most people can show up in a city and find food and shelter. So I never agreed.

It was until a few days ago that Ollie said the same thing, that I think I might be getting a reputation as a lucky person. This time is wasn't about getting murdered. It was about getting hepatitis or something like that.

Cut to Ollie and I on Koh Chang (again) for a long weekend. I am back in Thailand for a few days as a pit stop on the way to India. So Ollie and I decided to head back to our favorite island.

Last day on the island. Dropped off our motorbikes and aloe'd our sunburns and went to our favorite bar for a giant hamburger and a beer. Now, when I say "bar," I mean a structure with two standing walls and a bamboo roof that has deemed itself "Margaritaville."

It was here, over our burgers that we met the owner - a nice tatted guy from Sweden - and his compatriot, Charlie, who is apprenticing as a bamboo tattoo artist on the island.

Now, I've always been interested in getting a bamboo tattoo. Back in the day they would whittle down a stick of bamboo to a fine point and use it to hand-tattoo people in monasteries. Today, they attach a tattoo needle to the end so they can make finer lines.

After talking to Charlie for all of five minutes - keep in mind I couldn't understand most of what he was saying through his thick British accent - before I decided now is the time for one of these tattoos. A quick conversation and a brief pencil sketch later, we were in business. 500 baht. 30 minutes. We pay for his Diet Cokes during and his Singha beers after.

So this is how I found myself sitting on the floor of Margaritaville, hunched over a chair with delightful young Brit jabbing a needle into my neck. I requested Johnny Cash as the tattoo music and the the bar owner obliged. So, Johnny, Elvis, CCR and some other blues/rockabilly later, I had this to show for it.

This is my Pete Seeger tattoo. For his 90th birthday, while I was living on the reservation, I wrote him a letter about he inspires me to go to new places and write about different kinds of people and whatnot. You can see his postcard and my letter to him here.

I know he would probably hate the tattoo. He's not that kind of guy. But I love it. And I loved getting on Koh Chang.

As Pete would say, keep on.

Hearing a song for the first time, after all this time (no drugs necessary)

Isn't it funny how sometimes that part of your brain, the creative, feeling, wonderful part of your brain, just wakes up? Sometimes I have heard a song a million times and know it by heart, and that part of my brain wakes up and I am able to hear it for the first time.

This happened today with the song Mr Blue by the Fleetwoods. A great song, but not my favorite Fleetwoods song or a song that I thought too much about.

Until today.

I was listening to the RadioLab on colors (you have to listen to this episode!) and the last song they played was a cover of Mr Blue by this band I've never heard of. Do yourself a favor and listen to their version of the song here.

Enjoy!

skeletons

New Drawings. I thought I was going to draw more this summer but I got busy.

This one is of Am and Will's wedding. SO much fun. Dad said right afterwards, "I want to go to another wedding this weekend... with the exact same people." Wonderful night.

This one I drew on the plane to Rome. I got stuck on a bad layover.

Koh Chang

My last week in Thailand, Ollie and I took a trip to Koh Chang, a greatest island in the vicinity of Bangkok. We both forgot cameras, and passports, and fire ant protection. We pretty much didn't bring anything with us. So, in lieu of photographs, I drew these pictures on my plane ride back to Omaha.

We went to a waterfall. And a pretty blue and yellow butterfly kept fluttering and landing on my blue and yellow shirt. She thought I was a fellow flyer! We swam. Well, Ollie swam. I more floated and lingered. Then we got rained on. Then we got massages.

Our last night in town was sheesha-connect-four-beer-and-good-company night.

The moon came out only one night of our three nights on Koh Chang. So we looked at it. And a dog accompanied us all evening, chasing sand crabs and never catching a single one as far as I could tell.

We stayed in this little bamboo bungalow on the beach. It was perfect except for the fire ants that partook in my own consumption our last night on the island. I still have a scar from one of those buggers. Like my own little tattoo from a perfect holiday.

Talkin bout Thailand

Yeah, I know, I complained until the cows came home about living in Bangkok. So I'm sure you aren't expecting me to talk about all the things I miss and everything I've learned there.

Well, here I go, defying all your expectations!

I learned to fall in love as frequently and as recklessly as possible. If not with people then with food or sunsets or moonlight on the ocean or moments or dance parties or music.

I learned that if I am good enough at my job, get my work done and show up reasonably close to 9 a.m., then I am allowed to be as eccentric, quirky and different as I want. They can't say shit.

I learned that motorcycle taxis are the greatest way to travel. I also learned to always check and see if there is a bottle next to them while they wait for passengers.

I learned that staying up until sunrise is underrated.

I learned that no plans are the best plans. I took the overnight bus and then the overnight ferry to an island I wasn't crazy about. So I stayed for a few days and then took a 19-hour bus up North. Why book ahead or look ahead? It'll just ruin the surprise!

I learned to allow myself to be sad sometimes, although I'm still working on it. I allowed myself to be lonely. But I need to learn how to be sad and lonely without becoming so sad and lonely that I can't get out of bed. That's how I drive up electricity costs. Thankfully, there wasn't much to be sad about so this was a blue moon affair.

I learned I love ladyboys.

I also learned to give people the benefit of the doubt, otherwise I'd be miserable. But on the other hand, I tried not to let people take advantage, even if it means I had to walk home.

I learned all work meetings should be done over beers.

Lastly, I learned that every week at work was my last week at work. Ollie said that, and Saadia and I have been living by it ever since. If every week is my last week, then office politics don't matter, personalities and egos don't matter and I don't have to sweat the small stuff.

So yes, fine, I learned a lot. I'll miss street food, motorcycle taxis, massages, weekend island holidays, lat night Leos, BTSs, Blues Bar, Mali, Ollie, Saadia, Ben and Zhava.

But Omaha is still the best city on the planet.

Love you, Ollie!

I'm sitting in the Tokyo airport, halfway between my life in bangkok and my life back home. And it only seems fitting in this time to give the biggest thank you to the person who has meant the most to me over the past year and a half of my life. So here it is, a love letter, or rather, a letter full of love for someone who means more to me than I thought possible.

Ollie,

I'm not saying goodbye in this. Goodbye is for quitters. You and I aren't saying goodbye because sometime soon I'm going to find you at the baggage claim at some airport and give you a huge hug hello. More beers will be had between us. More existential all-night debates. More tuk tuks. More street food.

So instead of a goodbye, this is a thank you.

The past year and a half of this blog is filled with the great times we had together. And the spaces in between these blog posts are more great times that (probably for legal reasons) I didn't write about.

My time in Thailand would have been nothing without you. You are my best friend, the person I rant to at work, the person I rant to after work, over beers, about work; the person who I always want to see when I'm hung over or sick with dengue or depressed; the person who I want to party with and make jokes to that would make my mother blush. 

When I first met you at the airport and the few days after, I thought you were so fun and so smart and your accent just knocked me out! I can't believe all this time later that you think of me as such a good friend. I am blessed to know you and thrilled that you and I have done all of the damage we have. We survived Sonkran. We evaded sharks on Kho Phayam. We shared motorcycle taxis and saunas and hot springs, beers and breakfasts and sheeshas. 

And even if your memory doesn't work so well, just know that I remember it all. And you always have my blog to remind you!

You and me are still going to be you and me when I go. Ollie and Molly is just too catchy to be wasted. So wherever you are, I'll rob an old lady to afford a plane ticket. I'll wake you up waaaay too early in the morning when I don't remember the time difference between the two of us and I want to demand a Skype beer with you. I'll send you inappropriate ecards to your work account. Rest assured you're not done with me.

So it's all love. I never would have guessed that when I felt cheated out of going to Africa and being sent to Thailand (where the hell is Thailand?) that I would be the lucky one. If for nothing else over this past year and a half, I got to know you. And there is nothing more I could hope for out of a new experience.

We'll talk soon. Thanks for everything. Thanks for being you.

Love,
Molly

A love letter to a man way older and way unavailable

A few months back I decided to write letters to the people who have been inspirations on my life so far. You know, the ones who are still alive. One of those letters was to Maurice Sendak, who died this week. It saddens me that I never got to meet the man who made me so excited about words and creativity and storytelling. So, without ever getting to meet him, here is one last letter to an artist who means so much to me.

Maurice,

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for what you have given me and so many others through your art. I can't read "Where the Wild Things Are" without wanting to immediately sharpen my colored pencils and unclog my glitter glue pens and get to work.

Your sense of humor in writing and in real life is such an inspiration to me. I saw this quote from you online just recently about what Max from Where the Wild Things Are is doing as an adult, “Well, he’s in therapy forever. He has to wear a straitjacket when he’s with his therapist.” You are so perfect and honest and so witty at the same time.

But that's not my favorite line of yours. You always said, "I refuse to lie to children." You were part of the great crop of imagineers that treated children like they knew what was going on. You and Jim Henson and Frank Oz and so many others. On a recent episode of This American Life, Ira Glass read aloud from a children's book from the 1970's titled "Nobody's Family is Ever Going to Change." Why can no one write books like that for children anymore? And what are we going to do now that you've gone?

The last thing I want to thank you for saying is this, “I’m totally crazy, I know that. I don’t say that to be a smartass, but I know that that’s the very essence of what makes my work good. And I know my work is good. Not everybody likes it, that’s fine. I don’t do it for everybody. Or anybody. I do it because I can’t not do it.”

I love you, Maurice, for saying that. A friend told me awhile back that R. Crumb drew most of his comics for the sole benefit of his sister. And while most of what I draw is also for my sister's benefit, the real reason is I do these things because I can't not so them. I can't draw or photograph. I can't make music or write as well as I'd like. But I do it - make comics and drawings, write this blog - because I can't not do it. I can tell people what they truly mean to me much easier through a mix or a drawing, even if it's just 12 tracks of Salt n' Peppa or I drew something on the back of a Dunken Donuts bag.

So, thanks for the quote Maurice. You make me feel normal. Or at least, you make it normal not to be normal. And everyone else can go to hell.

Well, I'm off to glitter some McDonald's french fries containers, or maybe whiskey label. Not sure, but I'll keep you informed. Rest assured, it will wind up on this blog and I hope you see it. But I don't care if you like it or not. I'll keep doing it anyway, because I have to.

All the love in the world from your wild thing,

Molly