He has Emotional Responses. Wait, he has emotions?

Actor/College Friend Nikko Kimzin is currently traveling Europe with the international tour of West Side Story. His blog  can be found here. As he writes I will translate his thoughts and add commentary on his experiences, not with the hope of anyone actually reading them, but for my own entertainment. It's like Whatever Martha, only international. 


When I set out on this little venture to poke fun at my best friend I could not have possibly foreseen how exhausting his blog would become. Clearly I'm very behind in translating his blog/keeping anything consistent happening on this blog. Thankfully, he seems to be equally incapable of keeping it up. The good news is, this proves that our lives are so busy it is close to impossible to prioritize an online presence. Maybe that's true for him, I'm just somehow bored and overwhelmed at the same time - a state I like to call: exhausted.

In Nikko's update "Gutten First Week" there's a lot happening. First and foremost, he's having a good time and showing a lot of gratitude. I think it is moments like this where people have the most trouble understanding Nikko. At first his wishing we could all experience the excitement of his life comes across pretty rough. In fact I'm pretty sure it took me a week to get past,


"And for real for a sec, if I could gift something to you I would invite all of you to be a fly on the wall in the rehearsal room so you would be inspired to be a part of something bigger than yourself: a message of hope". 

Because I couldn't help but translate that as, 


"If only your life were as cool as mine. If only you were on an international tour that isn't only cool and fun but also socially aware, giving people a sense hope. HOPE. Like what are you even doing? Ugh. Be me" 

But I don't think that's what he's trying to do. When Nikko is passionate about a project he really does get very excited about it and wants to share it with everyone. It's actually pretty safe to say that he gets that way when he's passionate about anything. If it anything it helps to explain his choice of profession - the whole sharing of feelings in a public arena thing. As for the gushing about how  relevant West Side Story is to contemporary culture, he's not wrong but he's not also not terribly original. It's kind of the bread and butter of anyone who's working on anything written longer than 3 years ago. I'm interested to know the German perspective but he's clearly too offensive to talk to anyone. 

I will admit that I'm super jealous of the cool places that he is going to in Berlin. Especially the Holocaust Memorial which is also knows as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, or as Nikko kindly puts it "The Jewish Memorial." If you ever get the chance to go to a museum with Nikko, GO. His attention span isn't terribly long (which is nice because people tend to drag out museum visits to try to prove something) but he really appreciates things that are beautiful or historically significant. I'm glad he learned the word somber because it is actually a great way to describe how he gets.

The story about ordering the pastry in fake German. Well. I mean listen. It's a lot. I'm willing to bet that if Hilary had her choice, she'd deport him back to America. If America had her choice, she'd give him back to Mexico. But then what would I have to talk about?

Response to Nikko Nose

Actor/College Friend Nikko Kimzin is currently traveling Europe with the international tour of West Side Story. His blog  can be found here. As he writes I will translate his thoughts and add commentary on his experiences, not with the hope of anyone actually reading them, but for my own entertainment. It's like Whatever Martha, only international. 

He starts with "Ya'll." 

Yesterday, while I was sweating schvitzing in the D.C. Metro, I received the last phone call from Nikko for many months. Was it a little sad? Of course. Was it as bad as I thought it was going to be? Not at all. We had already had the teary and loving goodbye months ago when he visited DC and I faced the fact I wasn't going to see him for an indeterminably long amount of time. When the phone rang yesterday, I expected to feel the smallest pang in the heart; however, the pang became pain (yes...I just wrote that) when he announced that he would be making some ridiculous blog about "art, travel, God, food, and offending each country along the way."

Woof. 

The Title? Nikko Nose. Now I can't deny the fact that this is a pretty brilliant title. Not only is it a pun on the size of his mega-Aztec nose, it's also beautifully indicative of Nikko's habit of being certain that Nikko knows best. Am I anxious to see how this attribute serves him in foreign countries?...Am I ever?!?

Whether we were ready or not, the first blog post happened, and it started with, "First day in Europe ya'll..." I've never heard Nikko say "ya'll" in his entire life. I can't help but assume this is some kind of writing persona he's adapted for the blog. Exhausting? You bet. Why would he chose to adopt Southern slang upon leaving the country? For better or worse, Nikko is a representative of the American theater community while traveling in Europe and if "ya'll" is a part of that, I'm uncomfortable. 

I could wax poetic about his choice of background image (weird vintage frames on a distressed wall?) and other aesthetic choices he has made but I've decided to stay focused on the written content in hopes that occasionally I'll have something positive to say. 

His first entry is a list of things that happened on his first day. He's listed everything numerically but in paragraph form which I'll say isn't my favorite. His excitement about meeting the cast and his honesty about being an impossible roommate was charming and ultimately exciting. I may think he's an egomaniac, but I would hate to think he was having a difficult time with the company. No doubt they already find him hilarious, if not a little abrasive. His comment that in Germany you can add "gutte" before everything gives great insight to the kind of cultural insensitivity we can look forward to for the duration of his stay in Europe. He finishes the list with an anecdote about him trying to be funny with the cast and the joke failing - which isn't terribly surprising and will no doubt be a great inside joke between them for the rest of the tour. He also unnecessarily puts his character name in quotation marks for reasons that I'm not quite sure I'll ever understand. 

So he made it. The boy from Glendale, AZ made it Berlin to rehearse one of the cornerstones of the American musical theater canon. I'm glad he's safe, even if West Side Story isn't. Totally kidding.