For the past two weeks, I have been hard at work hashing and rehashing my thoughts and ideas about my trip to Amsterdam. Hash. So much happened, so much was experienced, so many canals were peed in... Suffice it to say that it has been very difficult coalescing these thoughts into a coherent blog post. Like, a really good, sensible piece of writing. I have grown increasingly frustrated with the duration that has passed since getting back to Copenhagen on March 6, and a midterm crunch of papers and exams coupled with The Señor's extended stay have provided too many distractions for me to buckle down to write. So I skipped classes today to polish the post and publish something for YOU, my not near but very dear readers. I will have to publish this piece in two installments, because I'm too fuckin' tired to write any more tonight. Therefore, I offer you PART ONE tonight with the hope that Part Two will be available shortly, with requisite fanciful pictures.

Amsterdaaaaaaamn!
Part One

By way of introduction, I don’t do drugs. I don’t smoke, snort, sniff, huff, puff, hop, hoot, or holler (although there have been times when I am wont to snap, crackle, and pop - breakfast times). Chalk it up to a politician dad and doting mother or simply my being too pussy to try anything new, but I have never felt it necessary to alter my state. It has not been for lack of opportunity either – between summer camp, Phish concerts, and family reunions, I’ve been offered more joints and bong hits than Mark-Paul Gosselaar has been offered acting work (ZINGER – but true!). Therefore, you can understand my frustration when people upon meeting me immediately assume that I am a huge pothead. I guess it’s because I’ve got this beard and shaggy hair, and I wear tie-dyed t-shirts, and I really like the Grateful Dead, and I say things like, “Ohhh I’m so high right now.” But I say that because I’m high on life, it’s just misinterpreted.

If you think about it, smoking pot is a hobby, but it is the only hobby that someone will assume about another person just by looking at him. No one ever looks at a guy in a bowling shirt with a handlebar mustache and thinks, “Check out that dude, he’s a total philatelist. Yeah, major stamp collector. Big time, big time.”

I tell people I don’t do drugs because I have an addictive personality, and I’m afraid that if I start, I won’t be able to stop. But, that’s bullshit. Not only is my claim bullshit (if anything, I have a quitting personality. I’ve quit everything I've tried – karate, piano, flossing), but the term “addictive personality” is bullshit. If you have an addictive personality, you should be addicted to everything you do and not just drinking or gambling or drugs. If there truly are people with addictive personalities, then there should be just as many shuffleboard addicts as there are alcoholics. They would have their own meetings and support groups, and they would have to explain their addictions like, “I tried shuffleboard for the first time on a Carnival Cruise, and I got hooked, man. I just couldn’t put down that stick; I was always jonesin’ for a little shuffle. It got to the point where I would go to nursing homes and knock on doors. Old men would come out in their bathrobes saying, “It’s four o’clock in the morning!” But I just had to play, man. I just had to play.”

All that being said, I got stoned in Amsterdam. I ate a weed brownie that was served to me by two friendly old ladies in one of the city’s more respected coffee shops, La Tertulia For you uninitiated, the marijuana bars in Amsterdam are called “coffee shops,” although I am still not exactly sure why. Maybe it is to confuse the elderly? I kept thinking that if my dad were here, he would undoubtedly saunter into one of the coffee shops looking for a hot cup of decaf. This is the same dad who took his wife and kids to a Hooters restaurant while on vacation in Florida because he was under the impression that it was an avian-themed family eatery.

The brownie was delicious, moist and real chocolatey like the Duncan Hines batches my mom whips up (except, replace the chocolate chunks with tetrahydrocannabinol). But the “baked” goods (har har) were not my first taste of Amsterdam. After self-navigating our way from Schipol Airport to Centraal Station late Friday night, Jeff, Christina, and I found the trolley that took us within walking distance of our budget hotel. Starving, I stopped at a snack bar called simply, “SNACK BAR” for a pseudo-dinner of falafel sandwich. Dutch snack bars are characterized by grimy old men serving all manners of schnitzel, krokets, and other grimy processed meats that sit behind a large glass display case in all their breaded-to-be-fried glory. The falafel was less than satisfying, but my palette would soon be cleansed by the smooth taste of Heineken beer, made smoother by virtue of its being free. Yes, free Heineken beer, at Boom Chicago’s Heineken Late Nite Massive. On a recommendation from friend and fellow NYC comedian Baron Vaughn (who happens to be fresh off his first appearance at HBO’s US Comedy and Arts Festival in Aspen - snaps to that), we made our first Amsterdam experience a two-hour improv comedy show at the Leidsplein Theatre performed by Europe’s best American improv actors. Check the website for more information, but it all started back in 1993 when three expat funnymen founded the comedy theatre that quickly grew into a world-class showcase for sketch and improv actors. Several Boom Chicago alum have moved onto Saturday Night Live performing and writing gigs, most notably Seth Meyers.

At the Friday night late shows, audience members are encouraged to shout out suggestions for improvised scenes or games, and the best suggestions earn the shouter a free long neck. Jeff and I won five freebies between the two of us for offering up such gems as Sunny Delight, dry wall, New England clam chowder, automatic nail gun, and Lionel Ritchie. We were dually duly impressed by what the talented comic actors could do with our random Minettisms on stage and by how gregarious they were off it. After the show, I had the opportunity to chat it up with some of the guys and gals to find out more about their backgrounds in comedy and their impressions of the expatriate lifestyle. They were all very friendly and approachable, and one of the founding fathers of Boom was apparently so thrilled to meet a bunch of young Americans who dug the theatre that he offered us VIP entrance into Amsterdam’s hot nightspot, Zebra. The club was hot alright, if not for the beautiful Euro trash then for the elevated room temperature. Needless to say, I was quite uncomfortable.

I had thought it best to wait until after visiting the Anne Frank House and Museum to experiment with THC for the first time. I did not want to be coming down from my virgin high into a depressing Holocaust-tinged scenario, and of course I did not want to be under the influence during the tour for fear of breaking out in a fit of paranoia at a most historically inappropriate time and place. We arrived at the museum after an early lunch on Saturday to find a long, multi-lingual line winding out the door. At first I was struck by the house's prominent location on a street facing one of Amsterdam’s main canals, Prinsengracht. If one is hiding from the Nazis, might I suggest a little outta the ways spot? Something on the down lowwwww, perhaps. Upon reaching the ticket office, I was also surprised to learn that anyone with the first names “Anne” or “Frank” received a 10% discount off the standard ticket price.

But the greatest astoundment came when I actually toured Anne’s house and saw that she really didn’t have it all that bad. Now don’t get me wrong about this – holing up in a secret annex above a jam and jelly warehouse for two years during wartime while SS officers patrol the streets below you must have sucked beyond all degrees of suckness, but the dimensions of the annex and the multitude of rooms contrasted sharply with my mind’s image of Anne’s living arrangements gathered from reading her diary. Yes, I read the book back in the day (which actually was not a Wednesday) and, just as I imagine a visual likeness to match the characters in a novel or the voices of familiar radio personalities (Carl Kasell definitely has a bushy, white beard), I had pictured Anne Frank and company huddled behind a bookcase, confined to a linen closet with nothing but their wits and a few rats to keep them sane. Alas, after making the pilgrimage to the actual house and stepping into the actual annex, I found several relatively spacious rooms for the seven or eight people who lived in hiding, complete with kitchen and bath. No bunk beds, no piss buckets, no rats – I’d take the annex over my freshman year dorm room, for sure.

The story of Anne Frank and her family is a tragic one indeed, and being in their house was one of those “take a step back and really appreciate this, but be careful not to bump into another tourist” kind of moments. Thankfully, the story of my visiting the Anne Frank House ends happily in the museum café where I helped myself to a heavenly fruit tart. But even as I sat and enjoyed my tart, I could not help but think of Anne. If she had not kept a diary that would later become an internationally-recognized cultural and historical phenomenon, the Anne Frank Museum along with its café and fine fruit tarts would not exist today. Crazy, ain’t it?