In Sarigerme

Big E's finally in Sarigerme, Turkey, his resting point for the next 2 and a half months. The Internet is up in my Pensiyon (like an apartment) so I should be able to cruise the WWW with relative, consistent ease from here on out. I think the appropriate word here is "Yay." I stayed in a fancy 4-star deluxe hotel my first couple nights in town called "Pressa di Sarigerme." It had just been completed and I was its first official guest. I pretty much had the whole place to myself -- 3 outdoor pools, 1 indoor pool, and 1 helluva view. I felt like a multibillionaire for the first time in my life, and, to tell the truth, it didn't
feel so bad. It worries me like the dickens, but I'm suspecting that my tastes may run towards the luxurious. I honestly liked being served meals by a team of eager servers (whom I thought affectionately as being my very own personal entourage of butlers), lounging about whilst sipping magaritas (actually, a water bottle in this case) by "my very own" pool and wandering aimlesslessly about a huge "mansion" as if I owned the place and were its quirky, semi-senile, cigar-chomping railroad tycoon owner. I am also a sucker for people cleaning my room. There was also this highly energetic team of what are called "Animators," who, I've been told, approximate Club Med entertainers -- they're a group of young people whose job it is to entertain you and make sure you're having fun -- in short, hired friends. But they're really nice people who played tennis with me, drank with me, and even TALKED with me. Their vivacious and free-spirited leader, Ozzy, is a Dutch-Turkish (Greek by ethnicity) dynamo of hip gyration and child-geared entertainment who never saw a dance move he did not absolutely want to bust.

Last night, I went to an outdoor Turkish wedding with my father's friend Fethi. It was the wedding of one of his relatives -- he says he didn't know who -- a "cousin or something." Anyway, it was, as can be imagined, quite the cultural event. The men sat apart from the women, until it was time to dance, when those few dance-inclined souls (I, through no small bit of coercion, was included) take the Floor o' Oriental Physio-Fervor. I had fun enough, especially since there was this nice girl named Feride with whom I danced, but what struck me was the intense amount of solicitation generated by the musicians. Already,
earlier in the night, when I was sitting, our merry band of musicians (with drums and flute that sounded like a foghorn) came by as a group and commenced to blast out what has to be some THE LOUDEST SOUND EVER generated using only human lungs as a power source. I was afraid I was going to go deaf if we didn't give them some money, immediately, and, thank Allah, we did and they left... But here on the dance floor, the town drummer man, a crazed, feverish look vibrating in his eyes, comes up to me, pounding his drum away in this intensely tribal, primative fashion, and he puts (he does!) the drum itself on my thigh. I look at him. He looks at me. We smile. And I knew right then and there what my mischevious, rhythmically-gifted Turkish friend was up to -- I forthwith gave the man a New Turkish Lira. And so he beat on, and, as he did so, it wasn't pride swelling his chest, but the money accumulating in his pocket....

Some more Observations --

1) Having firecrackers explode directly over you at outdoor weddings, while you are eating food, is not what could be generally considered a "good" experience, especially when the sooty detritus from said firecrackers finds its gravity-assisted way into your food, and all over your hair and arms.

2) The light went out a couple of times last night and certain humorous makeshift lumifacient shananigans ensued... 1) To illuminate Fethi's Polo/Jewelry shop, his friend Adam (which means "man" in Turkish) brought over his red and black motorcyle and proceeded to drive the vehicle into the shop proper, where he turned the metallic beast's lights on lest a German couple peruse golden necklaces under night's negroid wings...Later, at the wedding, I arrived to find the entire party mired in darkness, except those bathed in the resplendent lighting of a nearby parked minivan.

3) Fethi committed some interesting, and funny, English diction mistakes. I didn't correct him on them (though I do correct him on many grammatical mistakes) because I hope these gems keep on rolling in. Numero Uno happened when we were talking about the origin of town names, and I asked him what the nomenclatural story behind the nearby town of Dalaman was -- he said "It has no precious meaning. Just a name. Like a Chucky Cheese" (actually he didn't say that last sentence). I found it delightful that he substituted "special" with "precious," though, if you went by just a thesaurus, such a substitution technically makes sense -- but the peculariarities of the English tongue dictate otherwise... The second mistake happened when he was talking about his comedy-loving, Falstaffian friend/cousin/uncle/whatever at the wedding who "admires to make jokes." I know what he means -- I myself admire to write about someone who admires making jokes.

4)What's the deal with my next door neighbors' musical tastes here at the Blue Dolphin Pensiyon? What a quartet of songs these mo-fos blasted out yesterday roundabouts 11:00 AM! We're talking about getting things started right with Celine Dion's eternal tribute to Ocean-buried love -- "My Heart Will Go On." Things started heatin' up with our next heart-pumpin' hit -- Whitney Houston's magical "I Will Always Love You." (I'm not going to lie to
you, dear reader. It may seem like I mock these two songs in earnest, but I mock them in jest. That is, I actually like them, in an almost totally nonironic way.) Things really got cookin' with numero threeo -- the Spice Girls "Wannabe" (you know, "I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want...). Sweet Hezekiah did that song take me back to 10th grade! Rounding out this fearsome foursome of sweet song 'n harmony was the immortal peaon to boxing-ring blood, sweat, and tears -- Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger." This has to be one of the funniest songs ever written, and then practiced, performed, and played on the radio. As
you may know, it's the theme song to Rocky 3 (the one where Rocky gets pugilistically
involved with Mr. T). Its story is too good to be true. Its story is here:
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.lasso?id=3938
(Note: This song, possibly the greatest motivational pop-rock tune to come out of the early-to-mid 1980s, was played again only 15 minutes later. As of this briefing, the song had not been played a third time.)