2009 June | Kelsey Timmerman

Michael Jackson and Dracula Were Here

By Kelsey

When I stood at Dracula’s grave in Romania my head was filled with one thought: “Michael Jackson was here.”

Vlad Tepes is the Dracula of history. He wasn’t a vampire, just a ruler who believed in corporal punishment, namely driving huge stakes through people and letting them slowly die. For this he earned his nickname The Impaler. Bram Stoker based his novel on Vlad.

Michael Jackson is Michael Jackson.

Vlad’s tomb is famous for two things: it’s empty and Michael Jackson visited it when he came to Romania on his Dangerous World Tour.

To get to the Snagov monastery where Vlad’s empty grave is I had to paddle two other tourists and my cab driver in a rowboat to the island where it sits. A family lives on the island and runs tours of the monastery.

The monastery you are picturing in your head is too big. Vlad’s monastery is closer to the size of an old brick abandoned schoolhouse that your grandma would point to and say, “That’s where my mom went to school” except a little more ornate. It’s about several hopscotches long and a few four-square courts wide. At the front there was a photocopy of Vlad with candles on each side that the caretakers lit after swinging open the doors.

Vlad was a tyrant. He murdered thousands and ruled by fear. He has been dead for centuries and still people talk about him. But standing there I could only think about the nugget of info in my guidebook that the King of Pop had visited the monastery.

Had he stood where I stood? Did the visitor’s book still have his signature in it? Did he have to row his own boat? Did the caretakers chase him out the door for snapping photos?

I realized that I had never been closer to Michael Jackson than at that moment on a small island in a small monastery in Romania.

Vlad rocked Romania with fear. MJ just rocked Romania. It’s likely that both will be remembered in myths and legends where they’ll be vilified and deified for centuries to come.

Here’s MJ in Bucharest 1992 performing a tune that Dracula could get his groove on to:

Travel

Bear Gryll gets the Glory, camera crew gets the shaft

By Kelsey

Not pictured: All the locals who lug their gear and the camera crew that captures their glory

Members of Expedition Africa. (Not pictured: All the locals who lug their gear and the camera crew who captures their glory)

Few knows this, but a while back someone asked me to audition for a position as the host of a television series that focused on Tattoo cultures around the world.

I was fresh off my trip to Asia tracking down my clothes - pre-book deal. I set a camera in a field of corn and talked about where I came from and why I would be a great host for their show on tattoos, even though I knew I would be a horrible host for a show on tattoos.

I don’t have any tattoos, nor plan on getting any ever. The only tattoo I would consider getting is one from a man I heard about from some around-the-world sailors. He asks you some questions about yourself, you pay him, and then he gives you the tattoo he wants to give you. If you ask for a certain tattoo, “I want a pony,” the deal is off. “No Tattoo for you!” This option would work for me because if the tattoo looked stupid, I could just blame it on the guy who gave it to me, absolving myself from the decision making process. “Who would have thought that Care Bears were big on that remote island?” I could offer as my excuse.

Anyhow, I digress…

I would have been a crappy host for a number of reasons. First, I don’t have any tattoos. Second, I have a major problem with many of these “go places, do stuff, travel/adventure” shows: the camera crew is completely forgotten.

Bear Gryll…GRRRRR….gets me fired up. Death waits around every ravine, under every rock, and from every angle. At least that’s what he says. As he climbs up the mossy rocks of a waterfall he looks at the camera and says something like, “One wrong step and I fall to my death.” As he wades his way through snake and alligator infested waters he warns, “At any moment I could be attacked and fighting for my life.” Bear Gryll is nuts, sure, but what about the poor cameraman? He’s climbing a mossy waterfall while holding a camera. He’s trudging through death-infested waters while holding a camera.

I’ve been watching Expedition Africa on the History Channel. Four “explorers” are following in the steps of Stanley’s expedition to find Livingstone. The four fight over who’s leading the group where while local porters and even two bushmen look on. One explorer is even carrying around a pith helmet! It’s embarrassing. It’s just a reminder of the ugliness of colonialism. “We’re white, educated, explorers, the locals are cute and all with their bare feet, but we know better than they do.” The group comes across some tough conditions – climbing muddy mountains in the rain, crossing deserts in excruciating heat. But…what about the camera crew who are climbing a muddy mountain in the rain while holding a camera, and crossing the desert in excruciating heat while holding a camera?

I’m not a big fan of half stories and half-truths and that’s what these shows give us.

I would like to see a show about the camera crews who are tossed on ships while holding a camera filming the The Deadliest Catch, the camera woman sitting in the out of control rig barreling down the Ice Road, the dude climbing next to Bear Gryll.

Now that’s a show I could host. Although I suppose then there would need to be another show about the people filming the camera crew who are filming the camera crew.

Not only are the camera crews left out of the story although they are sweating, trekking, risking their lives just like the stars of the show, but the affects the cameras have on the results of the show aren’t acknowledged. Go to your nearest airport and start begging for 100-bucks. Not going to happen. But go to your nearest airport with a camera crew from the Amazing Race filming you, and your chances are good.

I’ve said it before, reality brings death to romance and I would like to make one addendum.

Reality (TV) brings death to romance and cameramen.

(Below the cut is an old column about my Travel Channel Hero Alby Mangels and the time I spent with his nephew in Australia)

A thousand words: Batman is coming to town

By Kelsey

I’m leaving soon to pickup my brother, Kyle, and his wife, Jenn, from the airport. In honor of their visit, here’s a picture of Kyle.

Lookout villains of Muncie! Batman is coming to town! (Note to villains of Gotham: run amok with reckless abandon. Live it up!)

Kyle is Batman

This Writer’s Life

Upping the Ante: 100 entries and I’ll shame my family

By Kelsey

The iPod contest is going awesome. There are some hilarious entries. Some have altered lyrics to existing songs and others have even made their own from scratch.

Obviously we’re all having a lot of fun, so…

Why not have even more fun?

Here’s the deal: Currently we have about 40 entries, if we end up with a total of 100+ by Tuesday (6/30) at 11:59 PM EST from NEW people, I will perform the winning song.

I’ll sing. I’ll dance. I’ll shake my groove thang.

Uncategorized

The New (and improved) “Where Am I Wearing?” Trailer

By Kelsey

Real life pros did this one. Whatchya think?

This Writer’s Life

Are you a bead maker or a boob flasher?

By Kelsey

As unemployment rises we tend to think more about work. I guess it the “absence makes the heart grow fonder” thing. Why we work? How we work? What we get out of work?

Yesterday I heard philosopher Alain de Botton talking about his new book, The Pleasure and Sorrows of Work. A lot of the discussion centered around jobs such as the person who fixes the machine that makes the part that makes the box in which the plastic bags are shipped that hold the cookies that people eat.

Ask that person what their job provides the world? What sense of accomplishment it gives them? They might not have an answer.

Industrialization and technology have separated many of us from what we actually do. Our jobs are so specialized we don’t see the products of our labor. de Botton explores what this means to our sense of self-worth.

I appreciate this perspective because it looks at things from the workers’ point of view. One of the questions I’m often asked when I talk about “Where Am I Wearing?” is “Do the garment workers take pride in their job?”

I’m afraid I don’t have a great answer for that. I usually mention the film “Mardi Gras: Made in China” that focuses on a Chinese Factory that makes Mardi Gras beads. The workers thought they were making jewelry that adorned decent folks trying to look nice. When they learned that the beads were “Show Me Your Boobs” currency whatever pride they might have had in their job was lost.

Here’s the trailer to the movie:

Here’s an excerpt from de Botton’s book:

Not that many consumers care to dwell on where their fruit has come from, much less where their shirts have been made or who fashioned the rings which connect their shower hose to the basin. The origins and travels of our purchases remain matters of indifference, although –- to the more imaginative at least -– a slight dampness at the bottom of a carton, or an obscure code printed along a computer cable, may hint at processes of manufacture and transport nobler and more mysterious, more worthy of wonder and study, than the very goods themselves.

Workers don’t think about the people who buy their products and consumers don’t think about the people who make the products they buy. Things just magically appear and we buy them.

How should we feel about that?

I take my crack at that question in my book, but right now I’d like to yield to Barbara Ehrenreich in her book Nickel and Dimed:

(Guilt) isn’t that what we’re supposed to feel? But guilt doesn’t go anywhere near far enough; the appropriate emotion is shame – shame at our own dependency, in this case, on the underpaid labor of others. When someone works for less pay than she can live on – when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently – then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The “working poor,” as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society…To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else.

A couple of questions:

Who provides the greater societal function: the person who pushes the paperwork to buy or sell the thing or the person who makes the thing?

Are you the guy who makes the thing that makes the thing that puts the thingamajig on the doohickey?

What greater good does the job you do provide society?

Have you ever flashed or been flashed?

Engaged Consumer

Chinese reader worried about the future of her village

By Kelsey

One of the things I ask myself about my book is, “Did I get China right?” I was only in China for a month. (Remember there was no book deal at the time and my leap of faith was getting really expensive.) While I don’t think it’s possible to get a place, especially China, right, I’m overjoyed to get this email validating that I didn’t get it all wrong. And, according to the awesome, fabtabulous, make-my-day letter I just received from a reader in China, I actually might’ve been pretty close.

Dear Kelsey,

I’m a reader of your book ‘Where am I wearing’. I spent two days finishing your book and I really love it. I’ve learned a lot from your trips and the effort that you made.

I’m a Chinese girl from Hebei province of China. My hometown is very near to Beijing and the economic situation there maybe better than most other areas of China. Right now I’m pursuing my Ph.D degree in Singapore. Believe it or not, my village is more or less the same with Dewan’s hometown. Only grandparents with grandchildren, almost all the young people leave their homes to pursue a ‘better’ life in big cities. Nobody takes care of the fields. Nobody plants crops any more.

I’m worried about the future of my village. One day it might disappear if the situation doesn’t change. I don’t know what I can do for it. I hope one day I can find a way to save my small village.

Thanks for your wonderful book and have a nice day!

Best regards,

Lynn

Here’s part of what I responded: “I think it’s important for young people like you and me to not forget where we came from. I hope you can find a way to save your village and I hope I can find a way to save mine too.”

I never cease to be amazed by how much we ALL have in common.

Mad World