CURRENT MISSION

Get in high-altitude hiking shape

ABOUT ME

I am a filmmaker/camera(/desk) jockey and spend my non-work time confusing my girlfriend and cajoling my friends, watching movies and select television, reading the news, bicycling, cooking, gardening, drinking every variety of beer I can find (including my home brews), urban spelunking (exploring abandoned buildings, etc.), farmer's market-ing, sharing thoughts with anybody and everybody, telling and listening to stories (preferably of the ghost variety), and working occasionally. I like recycling because it's wholesome. My work often makes me spend too much time inside, so help me out and make sure I get enough direct sunlight when I visit your town or when you visit mine.

PHILOSOPHY

I try not to have a rigid personal philosophy, mostly since I find that I can always look back five years and determine that five-years-younger me was a naive, pretentious, and foolish person. (This is also a major reason for not getting a tattoo.) In general, though, the golden rule always struck me as sensible. It's a simple concept in a way, but when you try to apply it genuinely, it actually takes a good deal of (rewarding) thought and work. Other than that, I think that being honest as much as possible is a fulfilling and useful endeavor, that we should (usually) try our best to be patient with even the most repellent individuals, and that treating your mind like an open repository for knowledge and experience is the way to go. I fashion myself a leftist and a pacifist, but I like to have my personal philosophy challenged and would love to talk with people who are interested in doing that. I try to keep abreast of all politics/current events in a critical way, but issues relating to the environment/Global Warming/Climate Change and the Drug War fire me up the most.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

In Philly: I'll tell you where the spots are, and I'll even accompany you if I feel like you might need help fending off some riffraff or finishing some food. In your town: I'll respect your rules (unless you dare me to break them), keep everything I come into contact with clean, cook brunch if possible, and get intimate with your public transit system while you watch.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I'm sarcastic in many parts of my profile, but for serious, I think that CouchSurfing is one of the best projects ever realized and one of the best things that's ever happened to me. I've hosted people from various lands and been hosted by amazing people in numerous places. I've met some of the most interesting, genuine, and generous people through CS, and I can honestly say that it's enriched my life a great deal, and I hope it will for years to come. I always tell people who are skeptical of CS that the worst experience I ever had hosting or being hosted was when someone I hosted was slightly awkward, but by no means a bad guy. CS = good.

Interests

Hiking, Camping, Biking everywhere anytime, Film, TV (only the good stuff like The Wire, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Planet Earth, Life, The Human Planet [love BBC nature docs!], GAME OF THRONES!, Home Movies, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! (and other Tim & Eric-related projects), The Larry Sanders Show, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Boardwalk Empire, Top Chef [guilty pleasure:], et al.), Beer Brewing, Skateboarding and Snowboarding once in a blue moon, Freestyle Rapping (seriously, try me), Listening to radio/podcasts (I love This American Life, On the Media, WTF w/Marc Maron, The Moth, Radiolab), Cooking, Leftist Politics/Activism, Learning from Non-Leftists, Karaoke and Dancing when the time is right, Dusting Off the Nintendo 64 once in a while, Exploring Cities (mine or yours), Sampling Baked Goods from various Chinatowns, Looking in other people's windows, Stand-up Comedy Spectating (and occasionally Participating), Playing Ping Pong/Table Tennis

• horses
• fashion
• dancing
• environment
• dining
• cooking
• beer
• walking
• drinking
• gardening
• politics
• news
• movies
• reading
• tv
• traveling
• podcasts
• karaoke
• cycling
• hiking
• spelunking
• camping
• snowboarding
• skateboarding
• tennis
• table tennis
• communications
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

Among countless other items:

Music: ¡Radiohead!, of Montreal, The Books, Yo La Tengo, Big L, The Philadelphia Experiment, Das Racist, Subtle's "For Hero: For Fool," The Knife's "Silent Shout," Girl Talk, RJD2, Pink Floyd, Wu-Tang, Beck, Talking Heads, Jay-Z, os Mutantes, LCD Soundsystem, Nina Simone, Beastie Boys, Neutral Milk Hotel, Kid Koala, Freezepop, Caetano Veloso, Black Star, Modest Mouse, Air, Lakutis, The Bird and the Bee, (Philly's own) The Roots, Pavement, The National, Amy Winehouse, Phoenix, A Tribe Called Quest, Neon Indian, Broken Social Scene, Aesop Rock, Do Make Say Think, The Notorious B.I.G., Caribou, Aphex Twin, Arcade Fire, MF DOOM (in all iterations), Akron/Family, Battles, Daft Punk, Gil Scott-Heron, Getz/Gilberto, Sonic Youth, Tropicalia

Movies: Errol Morris, Stanley Kubrick, P.T. Anderson, Wes Anderson, Werner Herzog, the Coen brothers, Charlie Kaufman, the Maysles brothers, Todd Solondz, David Lynch, Jacques Tati, Woody Allen, Terrence Malick, American Movie, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Gummo, The King of Kong, My Kid Could Paint That, Please Vote for Me, Baraka, Koyaanisqatsi, Manufactured Landscapes, Brazil, Das Boot, The Act of Killing

Literature: Catch 22, The Philadelphia Negro, 1984, A Prayer for the City, Black Brothers Inc., Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Methland, The Cop Who Would Be King, The Great Gatsby, A Song of Ice and Fire series (guilty pleasure :), Guy Delisle, Malcolm Gladwell, Eric Schlosser, Hunter S. Thompson, Michael Pollan, (lots of non-fiction), The New Yorker, The Nation

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Just one? Pfft.

Been encircled by huge, growling, salivating, territory-marking wolves in the snowy mountains of Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy

Bio Bay in Vieques, Puerto Rico (think blue, heavenly aura everywhere you move)

CS-squatted in a defunct high school in San Francisco with a kind and resourceful dude named Lance

Watched the moon rise two nights in a row over the Atlantic Ocean on Assateague Island (They also have wild horses there; they're not as exciting as a moon rise and they eat your food)

Watched layers of full-moon-illuminated clouds descend into a deep valley in the mountains of Tusheti, Georgia on the night of the summer solstice at the top of a ~6,000 foot-high hill.

Biked from Philly to NYC (more or less; a ferry helped a bit at the end)

Getting arrested is always an amazing thing to do

Teach, Learn, Share

The basics of beer-brewing, how to get around Philadelphia and where you should get around to, how to travel cheaply and efficiently, a little español, how to make a moving-picture

Countries I’ve Visited

Armenia, Belize, Canada, Costa Rica, Georgia, Guatemala, Italy, Netherlands, Panama, Poland, Puerto Rico, Spain, Turkey, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Mexico, United States

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